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SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



I 



SCIENCE AND 
IMMORTALITY 



BY 

SIR OLIVER LODGE, F.R.S, 



NEW YORK 
MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 

1908 






,A-C> 



OCT 3 W08I y li^<l 



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Copyright 1908, by 

Moffat, Yard and Company 

New York 







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A// Rights Reserved 
Published October, 1908 



• • • 

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CONTENTS 

SECTION I 
SCIENCE AND FAITH 

PAGE 

Chapter 1. THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY 

BETWEEN SCIENCE AND FAITH. 1 

The Teachings of Orthodox Science and of Orthodox 
Religion contrasted. 

Chapter 2. THE RECONCILIATION BETWEEN 

SCIENCE AND FAITH 23 

The Doctrines of Uniformity, Immanence, Agency, 
and Control, emphasised 

Chapter 3. RELIGION, SCIENCE, AND MIRACLE. . 48 
Meaning of Miracle — Arguments concerning the Mi- 
raculous — Law and Guidance — Miracle and 
Science — Miracle and Religion — Human Ex- 
perience. 

SECTION II 
CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

Chapter 4. THE ALLEGED INDIFFERENCE OF 

LAYMEN TO RELIGION. ... 77 
A brief Essay on the Neglect of Church Attendance. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Chapter 5. UNION AND BREADTH 86 

A Plea for Essential Unity amid Formal Difference 
in a National Church. 

Chapter 6. A REFORMED CHURCH AS AN ENGINE 

OF PROGRESS .112 

The Power of a truly comprehensive National 
Church. 

Chapter 7. SOME SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS RE- 
FORM 126 



SECTION III 
THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

Chapter 8. Part I. THE TRANSITORY AND THE 

PERMANENT. 143 

Chapter 9- Part II. THE PERMANENCE OF PER- 
SONALITY 162 



SECTION IV 
SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

Chapter 10. SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE RE-IN- 
TERPRETATION OF CHRISTIAN 
DOCTRINE 197 

Treating of the Atonement and of Regeneration, with 
a Criticism of the Doctrine of Vicarious Pun- 
ishment. 

Chapter 11. SIN, SUFFERING, AND WRATH. . . 218 
A Sequel to the preceding. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Chapter 12. Part I. THE MATERIAL ELEMENT IN 

CHRISTIANITY 249 

(1) Correspondence of Spiritual and Material; (2) 
The Resurrection of the Body; (3) The Res- 
urrection of Christ. 

Chapter 13. Part II. THE DIVINE ELEMENT IN 

CHRISTIANITY 272 

(The Meaning and Importance of the Doctrine of the 
Divinity of Christy or the Humanity of God.) 
(4) Christianity and History; (5) Varieties of Chris- 
tianity; (6) Ecce Deus, 



PREFATORY NOTE TO AMERICAN 

EDITION. 

This book is based upon articles by the author 
which have appeared in the Hibbert Journal and in 
the Contemporary Review^ and incorporates the sub- 
stance of many of those articles: but they have been 
revised, in parts re-written, added to, and amended, 
so as to develop a continuous treatment. 

They are arranged in four sections or divisions: — 

The first treats of the old problems of science and 
faith, of belief in the miraculous, and in the efficacy 
of prayer; and adduces justification for some of those 
beliefs. 

The second is mainly concerned with what are 
coromonly considered Ecclesiastical matters — ^that is 
to say with Church organisation and with Public 
Service of all kinds. 

The third concerns what is called the Future Life, 
and treats of the Immortality of the Soul. 

The fourth represents the interaction between 
Science and Christianity. This part aims at ex- 
pounding the fundamental Christian doctrines from 
a modern and scientific point of view, and at show- 
ing how ancient modes of expression, and the mediae- 
val language in which are embodied the most vital 



PREFATORY NOTE 

truths known to mankind, can be interpreted and as- 
similated by advanced thought. 

A threat of unauthorised publication of some of 
the Hibbert articles, as they stand, has been received 
from America; but if any such pubhcation appears, 
readers are hereby informed that it will not be the 
edited and authorised edition, but a mere reprint of 
unselected and unrevised material. 

Oliver Lodge. 
University of Birmingham. 

May 1908. 



PREFACE 

IT is difficult for a lay individual to suppose that 
effort on his part can have any influence in turn- 
ing the hearts of the disobedient to the vrisdom of 
the just, and so in some sHght degree preparing the 
way for the Coming of the Kingdom of Heaven 
upon Earth; and yet he may realise that those are his 
instructions, and that wonders are said to be possible 
if action be taken in a spirit of faith. Consequently 
a steward of the mysteries of physical science may, 
without undue presumption, proceed to utter such 
thoughts as have been vouchsafed to him on topics 
which, however treated, are undoubtedly of the high- 
est moment to mankind. 

Lebici, April 1908. 



Collect for Thihd Sunday in Advent 

{Composed by Bishop Cosinin, 1661) 

" O Lord Jesu Christ, who at thy first coming didst send 
thy messenger to prepare thy way before thee: Grant that 
the ministers and stewards of thy mysteries may likewise 
so prepare and make ready thy way, by turning the hearts 
of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, that at thy 
second coming to judge the world we may be found an 
acceptable people in thy sight, who livest and reignest with 
the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world 
without end. Amen" 



SECTION I— SCIENCE AND FAITH 



SCIENCE AND FAITH 

CHAPTER I 
THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY; 



ITi is widely recognised at the present day that the 
modern spirit of scientific inquiry has in the main 
exerted a wholesome influence upon Theology, clear- 
ing it of much encumbrance of doubtful doctrine, 
freeing it from slavery to the literal accuracy of his- 
torical records, and reducing the region of the mirac- 
ulous or the incredible, with which it used to be almost 
conterminous, to a comparatively small area. 

(This influence is likely to continue as true science 
advances, but it by no means follows that the nature 
of the benefit will always be that of a clearing and 
unloading process. There must come a time when 
such a process has gone far enough, and when some 
positive contribution may be expected. Whether 
such a time has now arrived or not is clearly open to 
question, but I think it will be admitted that ortho- 
dox science at present, though it shows some sign of 
abstaining from virulent criticism of religious creeds, 
is still a long way from contributing in any degree 
to their support ; nor are its followers ready to admit 
that they have as yet gone too far, if even far enough, 
in the negative direction. No doubt both sides would 



2 , SCIENCE AND FAITH 

allow that the highest Science and the truest Theology 
must ultimately be mutually consistent, and harmo- 
nious; but they are far from presenting that ap- 
pearance at present. The term "Theology," as or- 
dinarily used, necessarily signifies nothing ultimate 
or divine ; it signifies only the present state of human 
loiowledge on theological subjects. And similarly 
the term "Science," if correspondingly employed, 
represents no fetish to be worshipped blindly as abso- 
lute truth, but merely the present state of human 
knowledge on subjects within its grasp, together with 
the practical consequences deducible from such knowl- 
edge in the opinion of the average scientific man: it 
usually connotes what may be called orthodox science, 
— ^the orthodox science of the present day, as set 
forth by its professed exponents, and as indicated by 
the general atmosphere or setting in which figures 
in every branch of knowledge are now regarded by 
cultivated men. 

It may be objected that there is no definite body of 
doctrine which can be classed as orthodox science ; and 
it is true that there is no formulated creed; but I sug- 
gest that there is more nearly an orthodox science 
than there is an orthodox theology. Professors of 
theology differ among themselves in a rather con- 
spicuous manner; and even in that branch of it with 
which alone most Englishmen are familiar, viz. Chris- 
tian Theology, there are differences of opinion on ap- 
parently important issues, as is evidenced by the 
existence of Sects, ranging from Unitarians on the 
one side, to Greek and Roman Catholics on the other. 



THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY S 

In science, sectarianism is less marked, controversies 
rage chiefly round matters of detail, and on all im- 
portant issues its professors are agreed. This gen- 
eral consensus of opinion on the part of experts, a 
general consensus which the public are willing enough 
to acquiesce in, and adopt as far as they can under- 
stand it, is what I mean by the term "science as now 
understood," or, for brevity, "modern science." 

Similarly, by "religious doctrine" we shall mean 
the general consensus of theologians so far as they 
are in agreement, especially perhaps the general con- 
sensus of Christian theologians; ignoring as far 
as possible the presumably minor points on which 
they differ, and eliminating everything manifestly 
below the moral level of dogma generally acceptable 
at the present day. 

Now it must, I thinks be admitted that the modern 
scientific atmosphere, in spite of much that is whole- 
some and nutritious, exercises a sort of blighting in- 
fluence upon religious ardour. At any rate the great 
saints or seers have as a rule not been eminent for 
their acquaintance with exact scientific knowledge, 
but on the contrary, have felt a distrust and a dislike 
of that uncompromising quest for cold hard truth 
in which the leaders of science are engaged ; while on 
the other hand, the leaders of science have shown an 
aloofness from, if not a hostility towards, the theoret- 
ical aspects of religion. In fact, it may be held that 
the general drift or atmosphere of modern science 
is adverse to the highest religious emotion, because 
unconvinced of the reality of many of the occurrences 



4 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

upon which such an exalted state of feeling must be 
based, if it is to be anything more than a wave of 
transient enthusiasm. 

Nevertheless, we must admit that among men 
of science, there must be many now living, who 
accept fully the facts and implications of science, 
who accept also the creeds of the Church, and who do 
not keep the two sets of ideas in watertight com- 
partments of their minds, but do distinctly perceive 
a reconciling and fusing element. 

If we proceed to ask what is this reconciling ele- 
ment, we find that it is neither science nor theology, 
but that it is either philosophy or poetry. By aid 
of philosophy, or by aid of poetry, a great deal can 
be accomplished. Mind and matter may be then no 
longer two, but one; this material universe may then 
become the living garment of God; gross matter may 
be regarded as a mere appearance, a mode of appre- 
hending an idealistic cosmic reality, in which we really 
live and move and have our being ; the whole of exist- 
ence can become infused and suffused with immanent 
Deity. 

No reconciliation would then be necessary between 
the spiritual and the material, between the laws of 
Nature and the will of God, because the two would 
be but aspects of one all-comprehensive pantheistic 
entity. 

All this may possibly be in some sort true, but it is 
not science as now understood. It is no more science 
than are the creeds of the Churches. It is a guess, 
an intuition, — an inspiration perhaps, — but it is not 






THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY 5 

a link in a chain of assured and reasoned knowledge ; 
it can no more be clearly formulated in words, or 
clearly apprehended in thought, than can any of the 
high and lofty conceptions of rehgion. It is, in fact, 
far more akin to rehgion than to science. It is no 
solution of the knotty entanglement, but a soaring 
above it; it is a reconcihation in eoccelsis. 

Minds which can habitually rise to it are, ipso facto j 
essentially rehgious, and are exercising their religious 
functions ; they have flown off the dull earth of exact 
knowledge into an atmosphere of faith. 

But if this flight be possible, especially if it be ever 
possible to minds engaged in a daily round of scien- 
tific teaching and investigation, how can it be said 
that the atmosphere of modern science and the 
atmosphere of religious faith are incompatible? 
Wherein hes the incompatibility? 

My reply briefly is — and this is the kernel of what 
I have to say — ^that orthodox modern science shows us 
a self-contained and self-sufiicient universe, not in 
touch with anything beyond or above itself, — ^the gen- 
eral trend and outline of it known; — ^nothing super- 
natural or miraculous, no intervention of beings other 
than ourselves, being conceived possible. 

While rehgion, on the other hand, requires us con- 
stantly and consciously to be in touch, — even af- 
fectionately in touch, — with a power, a mind, a being 
or beings, entirely out of our sphere, entirely beyond 
our scientific ken; the universe contemplated by 
rehgion is by no means self-contained or self-suffi- 
cient, it is dependent for its origin and maintenance. 



6 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

as we are for our daily bread and future hopes, upon 
the power and the goodwill of a being or beings of 
which science has no knowledge. Science does not in- 
deed always or consistently deny the existence of such 
transcendent beings, nor does it make any effectual 
attempt to limit their potential powers, but it defi- 
nitely disbelieves in their exerting any actual influ- 
ence on the progress of events, or in their producing 
or modifying the simplest physical phenomenon. 

For instance, it is now considered unscientific to 
pray for rain, and Professor Tyndall went so far as 
to say: 

"The principle [of the conservation of energy] 
teaches us that the Italian wind gliding over the crest 
of the Matterhorn is as firmly ruled as the earth in its 
orbital revolution round the sun; and that the fall of 
its vapour into clouds is exactly as much a matter of 
necessity as the return of the seasons. The disper- 
sion, therefore, of the slightest mist by the special 
vohtion of the Eternal, would be as much a miracle 
as the roUing of the Rhone over the Grimsel preci- 
pices, down the valley of Hasli to Meyringen and 
Brientz. . . . 

"Without the disturbance of a natural law, quite 
as serious as the stoppage of an echpse, or the rolling 
of the river Niagara up the Falls no act of humiha- 
tion individual or national, could call one shower from 
heaven, or deflect towards us a single beam of the 
sun." ^ 

1 From Fragments of Science, " Prayer and Natural Law." 



THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY 7 

Certain objections may be made to this statement 
of Professor Tyndall's, even from the strictly scien- 
tific point of view: the law of the conservation of 
energy is needlessly dragged in when it has nothing 
really to do with it. We ourselves, for instance, 
though we have no power, nor hint of any power, to 
override the conservation of energy, are yet readily 
able, by a simple physical experiment, or by an en- 
gineering operation, to deflect a ray of light or to 
dissipate a mist, or divert a wind, or pump water 
uphill; and further objections may be made to the 
form of the statement notably to the word "there- 
fore" as used to connect propositions entirely differ- 
ent in their terms. But the meaning is quite plain 
nevertheless. The assertion is that any act, how- 
ever simple, if achieved by special vohtion of the 
Eternal, would be a miracle; and the implied dogma 
is that the special volition of the Eternal cannot, or at 
any rate does not, accomphsh anything whatever in 
the physical world. And this dogma, although not 
really a deduction from any of the known principles 
of physical science, and possibly open to objection as a 
petitio principii^ may nevertheless be taken as a some- 
what exuberant statement of the generally accepted 
inductive teaching of orthodox science on the subject. 

It ought, however, to be admitted at once by Nat- 
ural Philosophers that the unscientific character of 
prayer for rain depends really not upon its conflict 
with any known physical law, since it need involve 
no greater interference with the order of nature than 
is implied in a request to a gardener to water the gar- 



8 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

den — it does not really depend upon the impossibility 
of causing rain to fall when otherwise it might not — 
but upon the disbeHef of science in any power who 
can and will attend and act. To prove this, let us 
bethink ourselves that it is not an inconceivable possi- 
bility that at some future date mankind may acquire 
some control over the weather, and be able to influ- 
ence it; not merely in an indirect manner, as at 
present they can affect climate, by felling forests or 
flooding deserts, but in some more direct fashion; in 
that case prayers for rain would begin again, only 
the petitions would be addressed, not to heaven, 
but to the Meteorological Office. We do not at 
present ask the secretary of that government 
department to improve our seasons, simply because 
we do not think that he knows how; if we thought he 
did, we should not be debarred from approaching him 
by a suspicion of his possible non-existence, or a fear 
that our request would not be dehvered. Professor 
Tyndall's dogma will, if pressed, be found to neces- 
sitate one of these last alternatives; although super- 
ficially it pretends to make the somewhat grotesque 
suggestion that the alteration requested is so compli- 
cated and involved, that really, with the best intentions 
in the world, the Deity does not know how to do it. 

An attitude of pious resignation might be taken, 
that the central Office knew best what it was about, 
and that petitions were only worrying; but that would 
be rather a supine and fatalistic attitude if we were in 
real distress, and certainly, on a higher level, it would 
be a very unfilial one. Religious people have been 



THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY 9 

told, on what they generally take to be good author- 
ity, that prayer might be a miraculously powerful 
engine for achievement, even in the physical world, 
if they would only believe with sufficient vigour ; but 
(I am not here questioning the soundness of their 
position) they have dramatised or spiritualised away 
the statement, and act upon it no more. Influenced 
it is to be presumed by science, they have come defi- 
nitely to disbelieve in physical interference of any 
kind whatever on the part of another order of beings, 
whether more exalted or more depraved than our- 
selves, although such beings are frequently mentioned 
in their sacred books. 

Whatever they might be able to do if they chose, 
for all practical purposes such beings are to the aver- 
age scientific man purely imaginary, and he feels 
sure that we can never have experiential knowledge 
of them or their powers. In his view the universe lies 
before us for investigation, and, so far as he can see, 
it is complete without them; it is subject to our own 
partial control if we are willing patiently to learn 
how to exercise it, but of any other control, we would 
say, there is no perceptible trace. Even in the most 
vital concerns of Uf e, it is the doctor, not the priest, 
who is summoned: a pestilence is no longer attributed 
to Divine jealousy, nor would the threshing-floor of 
Araunah be used to stay it. 

The two subjects, moreover, adopt very different 
modes of expression. The death of an archbishop 
can be stated scientifically in terms not very different 
from those appropriate to the stoppage of a clock, or 



10 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

the extinction of a fire; but the religious formula for 
the same event is that it has pleased God in His in- 
finite wisdom to take to Himself the soul of our dear 
brother, etc. The very words of such a statement are 
to modern science unmeaning. (In saying this, I 
trust to be understood as not now in the slightest 
degree attempting to prejudge the question, which 
form is the more appropriate.) 

Rehgion may, in fact, be called supernatural or 
superscientific, if the term ''natural" be limited to 
that region of which we now beUeve that we have any 
direct scientific knowledge. 

In disposition also Religion and Science are oppo- 
site. Science cultivates a vigorous adult, intelligent, 
serpent-Uke wisdom, and active interference with the 
course of nature; religion fosters a meek, receptive, 
child-hearted attitude of dovelike resignation to the 
Divine will. 

Take a scientific man who is a man of science, pure 
and simple with no element either of a poet, or a 
philosopher, or a saint, and place him in the atmos- 
phere habitual to the churches, — and he must starve. 
He requires sohd food, but his sole provision is air. 
He requires something to touch and define and know ; 
but all his surroundings are ethereal, indefinable, 
illimitable, incomprehensible, beautiful, and vague. 
He dies of inanition. 

Take, again, a narrow religious man — one in whom 
religion is the sole aptitude — into the cold dry work- 
ings, the gropings and tunnellings of science, where 
everything must be scrutinised and proved, distinctly 



THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY 11 

conceived and precisely formulated, — and he cannot 
breathe. He requires ample air and space; whereas 
he finds himself underground, among foundations 
and masonry, very solid and substantial, but com- 
pletely cabined and confined. He dies of asphyxia. 
If a man be able to live in both regions, to be am- 
phibious as it were, — able to take short flights occa- 
sionally, and able to burrow underground occasionally, 
accepting the solid work of science and believing its 
truth, realising the aerial structures of religion, and 
perceiving their beauty, — ^will such a man be as hap- 
pily and powerfully at home in the air as if he had 
no earth adhering to his wings? Is the modern man 
as happily and as powerfully religious as he might 
have been with less information about the universe? 
Or, I would add parenthetically, as he will yet as- 
suredly become, with more? 

II 

Leaving general considerations, and coming to de- 
tails, let us look at a few of the simpler religious 
doctrines, such as are still, I suppose, popularly held 
in this country. 

The creed of the ancient Israehtes was well, or at 
least strikingly, summarised by Mr. Huxley in one 
of his Nineteenth Century articles (March 1886). 
He there says : "The chief articles of the theological 
creed of the old Israehtes, which are made known to 
us by the direct evidence of the ancient records, . . . 
are as remarkable for that which they contain as for 
th^t which is absent from them. They reveal a firm 



12 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

conviction that, when death takes place, a something 
termed a soul, or spirit, leaves the body and con- 
tinues to exist in Sheol for a period of indefinite 
duration, even though there is no proof of any belief 
in absolute immortality; that such spirits can return 
to earth to possess and inspire the living; that they 
are in appearance and in disposition likenesses of the 
men to whom they belonged, but that, as spirits, they 
have larger powers and are freer from physical limit- 
ations ; that they thus form one of a number of kinds 
of spiritual existence known as Elohim, of whom 
Jahveh, the national God of Israel, is one ; that, con- 
sistently with this view, Jahveh was conceived as a 
sort of spirit, human in aspect and in sense, and with 
many human passions, but with immensely greater 
intelligence and power than any other Elohim, 
whether human or divine." 

The mere calm statement of such a creed was 
plainly held by Mr. Huxley to be a sufficient refuta- 
tion. 

But we need not limit ourselves to the Old Testa- 
ment, some of whose alleged facts may admittedly be 
abandoned without detriment, as belonging to the 
legendary or the obscure; we may be constrained by 
science to go further, and to maintain that even what 
some regard as fundamental Christian tenets, such as 
the Incarnation or non-natural birth, and the Resur- 
rection or non-natural disappearance of the body from 
the tomb, have, from the scientific point of view, no 
reasonable likelihood or probability whatever. It may 
be, and often has been^ asserted that they appear as 



THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY 13 

childish fancies, appropriate to the infancy of civilisa- 
tion and a prescientific credulous age ; readily intelligi- 
ble to the historian and student of folk-lore, but not 
otherwise interesting. The same has been said of 
every variety of alleged miraculous occurrence, and 
not merely of such dogmas as the fall of man from 
an original state of perfection, of the subsequent ex- 
tirpation of the human race down to a single family, 
and so on. 

The whole historical record, wherever it exceeds the 
commonplace, every act attributed directly to the 
Deity, whether it be sending fire from heaven, or 
writing upon stone, or leadings by cloud and fire, or 
conversations, whether during trance or otherwise, is 
incompatible with the teachings of modern science (let 
it be clearly remembered how I have defined the 
phrase "modern science" above) ; and when consid- 
ered prosaically, much of the record is summarily 
discredited, even by many theologians now. Nor 
is this acquiescence in negation confined to the 
leaders. The general religious world has agreed ap- 
parently to throw overboard Jonah and the whale, 
Joshua and the sun, the three Children and the fiery 
furnace; it does not seem to take anything in the 
book of Judges or the book of Daniel very seriously; 
and though it still clings pathetically to the book of 
Genesis, it is willing to relegate to poetry, i.e. to im- 
agination or fiction, such legends as the creation of 
the world, Adam and his rib. Eve and the apple, 
Noah and his ark, language and the tower of Babel, 
Elijah and the chariot of fire, and many others. The 



14 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

stock reconciling phrase, applied to the legend of the 
six-days' creation, or the Levitican mistakes in Nat- 
ural History, after the strained "day-period" mode 
of interpretation had been exploded in "Essays and 
Reviews," used to be, that the Bible was never meant 
to teach science ; wherefore, whenever it touches upon 
any branch of natural knowledge, its statements are 
to be interpreted in a friendly spirit, i,e, it is to be 
glossed over, and in fact disbelieved. But a book 
which deals with so prodigious a subject as the origin 
of all things, and the history of the human race, can- 
not avoid a treatment of natural facts which is really 
a teaching of science, whether such teaching is meant 
or not; and indeed the whole idea involved in the 
word "meant" is repugnant to the conceptions of 
biological science, which claims to have ousted teleol- 
ogy from its arena. 

Moreover, if religious people go as far as this, 
where are they to stop? What, then, do they pro- 
pose to do with the turning of water into wine, the 
ejection of devils, the cursing of the fig-tree, the 
feeding of five thousand, the raising of Lazarus? 
Or, to go deeper still, what do they make of the 
scene at the Baptism, of the Transfiguration, of the 
Crucifixion, the appearances after Death, the As- 
cension into heaven? On all these points I venture to 
suggest that neither religion nor science has said its 
last word. 

But it may be urged that even these are but details 
compared with the one transcendent doctrine of the 
existence of an omnipotent and omniscient benevo- 



THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY 15 

lent personal God; the fundamental tenet of nearly 
all religions. But so far as science has anything to 
say on tliis subject, and it has not very much, its 
tendency is to throw mistrust, not upon the existence 
of Deity itself, but upon any adjectives appKed to 
the Deity. "Infinite" and "eternal" may pass, and 
"omnipotent" and "omniscient" may reluctantly be 
permitted to enter with them, — ^these expansive epi- 
thets reheve the mind, without expressing more than 
is imphcitly contained in the substantive God. But 
concerning "personal" and "benevolent" and other 
anthropomorphic adjectives, science is exceedingly 
dubious; nor is omnipotence itself very easily recon- 
cilable with the actual condition of things as we now 
experience them. The present state of the world is 
very far short of perfection. Why are things still 
imperfect if controlled by a benevolent omnipoteijce? 
Why, indeed, does evil or pain at all exist? All very 
ancient puzzles these, but still alive; and the solution 
to them so far attempted by science lies in the word 
Evolution, a word whose applicability to the work of 
a perfect God may readily be the subject of contro- 
versy. 

Taught by science, we learn that there has been no 
fall of man, there has been a rise. Through an ape- 
like ancestry, back through a tadpole and fishhke 
ancestry, away to the early beginnings of life, the 
origin of man is being traced by science. There was 
no specific creation of the world such as was con- 
ceived appropriate to a geocentric conception of the 
universe ; the world is a condensation of primeval gas. 



16 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

a congeries of stones and meteors fallen together; 
still falling together, indeed, in a larger neighboring 
mass (the Sun). By the energy of that still persist- 
ent falling together, the ether near us is kept con- 
stantly agitated, and to the energy of this ethereal 
agitation all the manifold activity of our planet is 
due. The whole system has evolved itself from mere 
moving matter in accordance with the law of gravi- 
tation, and there is no certain sign of either begin- 
ning or end. Solar systems can by collision or other- 
wise resolve themselves into nebulae, and nebulae left 
to themselves can condense into solar systems, — 
everywhere in the spaces around us we see a part of 
the process going on; the formation of solar systems 
from whirling nebulae lies before our eyes, if not in 
the visible sky itself, yet in the magnified photo- 
graphs taken of that sky. Even though the whole 
process of evolution is not completely understood as 
yet, does anyone doubt that it will become more thor- 
oughly understood in time? and if they do doubt it, 
would they hope eif ectively to bolster up rehgion by 
such a doubt? 

It is difficult to resist yielding to the bent and trend 
of "modern science," as well as to its proved conclu- 
sions. Its bent and trend may have been wrongly 
estimated by its present disciples: a large tract of 
knowledge may have been omitted from its ken, 
which when included will revolutionise some of their 
accepted opinions; but, however this may be, there 
can be no doubt about the tendency of orthodox 
science at the present time. It suggests to us that 



THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY 17 

the Cosmos is self-explanatory, self-contained, and 
self -maintaining. From everlasting to everlasting 
the material universe rolls on, composing worlds and 
disintegrating them, producing vegetable beauty and 
destroying it, evolving intelligent animal life, devel- 
oping that into a self-conscious human race, and then 
plunging it once more into annihilation. 

"Thou makest thine appeal to me! 
I bring to life, I bring to death. 
The spirit does but mean the breath, 
I know no more. . . ." 

But at this point the theologian happily and 
eagerly interposes, with a crucial inquiry of science 
about this same bringing to life. Granted that the 
blaze of the sun accounts for winds and waves, and 
hail, and rain, and rivers, and all the myriad activities 
of the earth, does it account for life? Has it ac- 
counted for the life of the lowest animal, the tiniest 
plant, the simplest cell, hardly visible but yet self- 
moving, in the field of a microscope? 

And science, in chagrin, has to confess that hitherto 
in this direction it has failed. It has not yet witnessed 
the origin of the smallest trace of life from dead mat- 
ter: all life, so far as has been watched, proceeds 
from antecedent life. Given the life of a single cell, 
science would esteem itself competent ultimately to 
trace its evolution into all the myriad existences of 
plant and animal and man; but the origin of proto- 
plasmic activity itself as yet eludes it. But will the 
Theologian triumph in the admission? will he therein 
detect at last the dam which shall stem the torrent of 



18 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

scepticism? will he base an argument for the direct 
action of the Deity in mundane affairs on that fail- 
ure, and entrench himself behind that present incom- 
petence of labouring men? If so, he takes his stand 
on what may prove a yielding foundation. The pres- 
ent powerlessness of science to explain or originate 
hfe is a convenient weapon wherewith to fell a 
pseudo-scientific antagonist who is dogmatising too 
loudly out of bounds; but it is not perfectly secure 
as a permanent support. In an early stage of civili- 
sation it may have been supposed that flame only pro- 
ceeded from antecedent flame, but the tinder-box and 
the lucif er-match were invented nevertheless. Theo- 
logians have probably learnt by this time that their 
central tenets should not be founded, even .partially, 
upon nescience, or upon negations of any kind, lest 
the placid progress of positive knowledge should 
once more undermine their position, and another dis- 
covery have to be scouted with alarmed and violent 
anathemas. 

Any year, or any century, the physical aspect of 
the nature of life may become more intelligible, and 
may perhaps resolve itself into an action of already 
known forces on the very complex molecule of 
protoplasm. Already in Germany have inorganic 
and artificial substances been found to crawl about on 
glass slides under the action of surface-tension or 
capillarity, with an appearance which is said to have 
deceived even a biologist into hastily pronouncing 
them living amoebae. Life in its ultimate element and 
on its material side is such a simple thing, it is but a 



THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY 19 

slight extension of known chemical and physical 
forces ; the cell must be able to respond to stimuli, to 
assimilate outside materials, and to subdivide. I ap- 
prehend that there is not a biologist but beUeves (per- 
haps quite erroneously) that sooner or later the dis- 
covery will be made, and that a cell having all the 
essential functions of life will be constructed out of 
inorganic material. Seventy years ago organic 
chemistry was the chemistry of vital products, of 
compounds that could not be made artificially by man. 
Now there is no such chemistry ; the name persists, but 
its meaning has changed. 

It may be conceivably argued that after all we are 
alive, and that if we ever learn how to make animals 
or plants, they as our creation will originate from 
pre-existent life; just as when we make new species 
by artificial selection we exercise a control over the 
forces of nature which may have some remote Hkeness 
to Divine control. And this may possibly be a theme 
capable of enlargement. 

But meanwhile what do we mean by sucK a phrase 
as "Divine control"? for, after all, the controversy be- 
tween religion and science is not so much a contro- 
versy as to the being or not being of a God. Science 
might be willing to concede His existence as a vague 
and ineffective hypothesis, but there would still re- 
main a question as to His mode of action, a contro- 
versy as to the method of the Divine government of 
the world. 

And this is the standing controversy, by no means 
really dead at the present day. Is the world con- 



20 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

trolled by a living Person, accessible to prayer, influ- 
enced by love, able and willing to foresee, to inter- 
vene, to guide and wistfully to lead without compul- 
sion spirits in some sort akin to Himself? 

Or is the world a self -generated, self -controlling 
machine, complete and fully organised for movement, 
either up or down, for progress or degeneration, ac- 
cording to the chances of heredity and the influence 
of environment? Has the world, as it were, secreted 
or arrived at life and mind and consciousness by the 
play of natural forces acting on the complexities of 
highly developed molecular aggregates; at first, life- 
cells, ultimately brain-cells; and these are not the or- 
gan or instrument, but the very reality and essence 
of life and of mind? 

If there be any other orders of conscious existence 
in the universe, as probably there are, are they also 
locked up on their several planets, without the power 
of communicating or helping or informing, and all 
working out their own destiny in permanent isola- 
tion? Everything in such a world would be not only 
apparently but really a definite sequence of cause and 
eff*ect, just as it seems to us here; and prayer, to be 
eff*ectual in such a world must be not what theologians 
mean by prayer, but must be either simple meditation 
for acquiescence in the inevitable, or else a petition 
addressed to some other of the dwellers in our time 
and place, that they may be induced by benevolent 
acts to ease some of the burdens to which their peti- 
tioners are liable. 



THE OUTSTANDING CONTROVERSY 21 

We thus return to our original thesis, that the root 
question or outstanding controversy between science 
and faith rests upon two distinct conceptions of the 
universe: — ^the one, that of a self-contained and self- 
sufficient universe, with no outlook into or links with 
anything beyond, uninfluenced by any life or mind 
except such as is connected with a visible and tangible 
material body; and the other conception, that of a 
universe lying open to all manner of spiritual influ- 
ences, permeated through and through with a Divine 
spirit, guided and watched by living minds, acting 
through the medium of law indeed, but with intelli- 
gence and love behind the law: a universe by no means 
self-sufficient or self-contained, but with sensitive ten- 
drils groping into another supersensuous order of 
existence, where reign laws hitherto unimagined by 
science, but laws as real and as mighty as those by* 
which the material universe is governed. 

According to the one conception, faith is childish 
and prayer absurd; the only individual immortality 
lies in the memory of descendants; benevolence and 
cheerful acquiescence in fate are the highest religious 
attributes possible ; and the future of the human race 
is determined by the law of gravitation and the cir- 
cumstances of space. 

According to the other conception, prayer may be 
mighty to the removal of mountains, and by faith we 
may feel ourselves citizens of an eternal and glorious 
cosmogony of mutual help and co-operation, advanc- 
ing from lowly stages to ever higher states of happy; 



22 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

activity, world without end, and may catch in antici- 
pation some glimpses of that "one far-off divine event 
to which the whole creation moves." 

The whole controversy hinges, in one sense, on a 
practical pivot — the efficacy of prayer. Is prayer to 
hypothetical and supersensuous beings as senseless 
and useless as it is unscientific, or does prayer pierce 
through the husk and apparent covering of the sen- 
suous universe, and reach something living, loving, 
and helpful beyond? 

And in another sense the controversy turns upon a 
question of fact. Do we live in a universe permeated 
with life and mind: life and mind independent of 
matter and unlimited in individual duration? Or is 
life limited, in space to the surface of planetary 
masses of matter, and in time to the duration of the 
material envelope essential to its manifestation? 

The answer is given in one way by orthodox mod- 
ern science, and in another way by Religion of all 
times ; and until these opposite answers are made con- 
sistent, the reconciliation between Science and Faith is 
incomplete. 



CHAPTER II 
THE RECONCILIATION 



IT may or may not have been observed, by anyone 
who has read the previous chapter, — but in so far 
as it has been missed, the whole meaning has been 
misconceived, — that when speaking of the atmosphere 
or the conclusions, the doctrines or the tendency, of 
"science," I was careful always to explain that I 
meant orthodox or present-day science; meaning not 
the comprehensive grasp of a Newton, but science as 
now interpreted by its recognised official exponents, 
— ^by the average Fellow of the Royal Society for 
instance. Just as by "faith" I intended not the ec- 
static insight aroused in a seer by some momentary 
revelation, but the ordinary workaday belief of the 
average enlightened theologian. And my thesis was 
that the attitudes of mind appropriate to these two 
classes, were at present fundamentally diverse; that 
there was still an outstanding controversy, or ground 
for controversy, between science and faith, although 
active fighting has been suspended, and although all 
bitterness has passed from the conflict, let us hope 
never to return. But the diversity remains, and for 

23 



24 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

the present it is better so, if it has not achieved its 
work. Eliminating the bitterness, the conflict has 
been useful, and it would be far from well even to 
attempt to bring it to a close prematurely. But yet 
there must be an end to it some time ; reconciliation is 
bound to lie somewhere in the future ; no two parts or 
aspects of the Universe can permanently and really 
be discordant. The only question is where the meet- 
ing-place may be ; whether it is nearest to the orthodox 
faith or to the orthodox science of the present day. 
This question is the subject of the present chapter, 
which is a sequel to the preceding. Let me, greatly 
daring, presume to enter upon the inquiry into what 
is really true and essential in the opposing creeds, how 
much of each has its origin in over-hasty assumption 
or fancy, and how far the opposing views are merely 
a natural consequence of imperfect vision of opposite 
sides of the same veil. 

First among the truths that will have to be ac- 
cepted by both sides, we may take the reign of Law, 
sometimes called the Uniformity of Nature. The dis- 
covery of uniformity must be regarded as mainly the 
work of Science: it did not come by revelation. In 
moments of inspiration it was glimpsed, — "the same 
yesterday, to-day, and for ever," — ^but the glimpse 
was only momentary, the Hebrew "atmosphere" was 
saturated with the mists of cataclysm, visible judg- 
ments, and conspicuous interferences. We used to 
be told that the Creator's methods were adapted to the 
stage of His Creatures, and varied from age to age : 
that it was really His actions, and not their mode of 



THE RECONCILIATION 25 

regarding them, that varied. The doctrine of uni- 
formity first took root and grew in scientific soil. 

At first sight this doctrine of uniformity excludes 
Divine control; and the law of evolution proceeds 
still further in the direction of excluding everything ; 
in the nature of personal will, of intention, of guid- 
ance, of adaptation, of management. It shows that 
things change and how they change, and it attempts 
to show why they change. The Darwinian form of it 
attempts to account for the origin of species by in- 
evitable necessity, free from artificial selection or op- 
erations analogous to those of the breeder. The old 
Theology has gone, and guidance and purpose appear 
to have gone with it. 

At first sight, but at first sight only. So might an 
observer, inspecting some great and perfect factory, 
with machines constantly weaving patterns, some 
beautiful, some ugly, conclude, or permit himself to 
dream at least, after some hours' watching, during 
which everything proceeded without a hitch, driven as 
it were by inexorable fate, that everything went off 
itself, controlled by cold dreary necessity. And if 
his scrutiny could be continued for weeks or years, 
and it still presented the same aspect, his dream 
would begin to seem to be true: the perfection of 
mechanism would weary the spectator: his human 
weakness would long for something to go wrong, so 
that someone from an upper office might step down 
and set it right again. Humanity is accustomed to 
such interventions and breaks in a ceaseless sequence, 
and, when no such breaks and interventions occur, 



26 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

may conclude hastily that the scheme is self -originat- 
ing, self -sustained, that it works to no ultimate and 
foreseen destiny. 

So sometimes, looking at the east end of London, 
or many another only smaller city, has the feeling of 
despair seized men : they wonder what it can all mean. 
So, on the other hand, looking at the loom of nature, 
has the feeling, not of despair, but of what has been 
called atheism, one ingredient of atheism, arisen : athe- 
ism never fully realised, and wrongly so-called; re- 
cently it has been called severe Theism indeed; for it 
is joyful sometimes, interested and placid always, ex- 
ultant at the strange splendour of the spectacle which 
its intellect has laid bare to contemplation, satisfied 
with the perfection of the mechanism, content to be a 
part of the self -generated organism, and endeavour- 
ing to think that the feelings of duty, of earnest ef- 
fort, and of faithful service, which conspicuously 
persist in spite of all discouragement, are on this 
view intelligible as well as instinctive, and sure that 
nothing less than unrepining, unfaltering, unswerv- 
ing acquiescence is worthy of our dignity as man. 

The law of evolution not only studies change and 
progress, it seeks to trace sequences back to ante- 
cedents : it strains after the origin of all things. But 
ultimate origins are inscrutable. Let us admit, as 
scientific men, that of real origin, even of the sim- 
plest thing, we know nothing; not even of a pebble. 
Sand is the debris of rocks, and fresh rocks can be 
formed of compacted sand ; but this suggests infinity, 
not origin. Infinity is non-human and we shrink 



THE RECONCILIATION 27 

from it, yet what else can there be in space? And if 
in space, why not in time also? Much might be said 
here, but let it pass. We must admit that science 
knows nothing of ultimate origins. Which first, 
the hen or the egg'i is a trivial form of a very 
real puzzle. That the world, in the sense of this 
planet, this homely lump of matter we call the earth 
— ^that this had an origin, a history, a past, intelhgible 
more or less, growingly intelligible to the eye of 
science, is true enough. The date when it was molten 
may be roughly estimated; the manner and mechan- 
ism of the birth of the moon has been guessed: the 
earth and moon then originated in one sense; before 
that they were part of a nebula, Hke the rest of the 
solar system; and some day the solar system may 
again be part of a nebula, by reason of colhsion with 
some at present tremendously distant mass. But 
all that is nothing to the Universe; nothing even to 
the visible universe. The collisions there take place 
every now and again before our eyes. The Universe 
is full of lumps of matter of every imaginable size: 
the history of a solar system may be written — its birth 
and also its death, separated perhaps by millions of 
millions of years; but what of that? It is but an epi- 
sode, a moment in the eternal cosmogony, and the 
eye of history looks to what happened before the 
birth and after the death of any particular aggre- ' 
gate; just as a child may trace the origin and the de- 
struction of a soap bubble, the form of which is evan- 
escent, the material of which is permanent. 

While the soap bubble lived it was the scene of 



28 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

much beauty and of a kind of law and order impossi- 
ble to the mere water and soap out of which it was 
made, and into which again it has collapsed. The his- 
tory of the soap bubble can be written, but there is a 
before and an after. So it is with the solar system ; so 
with any assigned collocation of matter in the uni- 
verse. No point in space can be thought of "at which 
if a man stand it shall be impossible for him to cast a 
javelin into the beyond;" nor can any epoch be con- 
ceived in time at which the mind will not instantly 
and automatically inquire, "and what before," or 
"what after?" 

Yet does the human mind pine for something finite : 
it longs for a beginning, even if it could dispense 
with an end. It has tried of late to imagine that the 
law of dissipation of energy was a heaven-sent mes- 
sage of the finite duration of the Universe, so that 
before everything was, it could seek a Great First 
Cause; and after everything had been, could take 
refuge once more in Him. 

Seen more closely, these are childish notions. They 
would give no real help if they were true ; any more 
than other fairy tales suitable for children. 

In the dawn of civilisation God "walked in the gar- 
den in the cool of the day." Down to say the middle 
of the nineteenth century He brought things into 
existence by a creative Fiat^ and looked on His work 
for a time with approbation; only to step down and 
destroy a good deal of it before many years had 
elapsed, and then to patch it up and try to mend it 
from time to time. 



THE RECONCILIATION 29 

AH very human : the endless rumble of the machin- 
ery is distressing, perfection is intolerable. Still more 
intolerable is imperfection not attended to; the 
machinery groans, lacks oil, shows signs of wear, 
some of the fabrics it is weaving are hideous; why, 
why, does no one care? Surely the manager will be- 
fore long step down and put one of the looms to 
rights, or scold a workman, or tell us what it is all for, 
and why he needs the woven fabric, der Gotiheit 
lebendiges Kleid, 

We see that he does not now interfere, not even 
when things go very wrong; the "hands" are left to 
put things right as best they can, nothing mysterious 
ever happens now, it is all commonplace and semi- 
inteUigible ; we ourselves could easily throw a machine 
out of gear; we do, sometimes; we ourselves if we 
are clever enough and patient enough, could even 
perform the far harder task of putting one to right 
again; we could even suggest fresh patterns; we 
seem to be more than onlookers — as musicians and 
artists we can create — perhaps we are foremen; and 
if ideas occur to us, why should we not throw them 
into the coromon stock? There is no head manager 
at all, this thing has been always running; as the 
hands die off, others take their places ; they have not 
been selected or appointed to the job; they are only 
here as the fittest of a large number of whom they 
alone survive; even the looms seem to have a self- 
mending, self -regenerative power; and we ourselves, 
we are not looking at it or assisting in it for long. 
When we go, other brilliantly endowed and inventive 



so SCIENCE AND FAITH 

spectators or helpers will take our places. We under- 
stand the whole arrangement now; it it simpler than 
at first we thought. 

Is it, then, so simple? Does the uniformity and 
the eternity and the self-sustainedness of it make it 
the easier to understand? Are we so sure that the 
guidance and control are not really continuous, in- 
stead of being, as we expected, intermittent? May 
we be not looking at the working of the Manager all 
the time, and at nothing else? Why should He step 
down and interfere with Himself? 

That is the lesson science has to teach theology — 
to look for the action of the Deity? if at all, then 
always ; not in the past alone, nor only in the future, 
but equally in the present. If His action is not visi- 
ble now, it never will be, and never has been visible. 

Shall we look for it in toy eruptions in the West 
Indies? As well look for it in the fall of a child's 
box of bricks! Shall we hope to see the Deity some 
day step out of Himself and display His might or 
His love or some other attribute? We can see Him 
novv^ if we look; if we cannot see, it is only that our 
eyes are shut. 

"Closer is He than breathing, nearer than hands or feet:" — 

poetry, yes — ^but also science; the real trend and 
meaning of Science, whether of orthodox "science" 
or not. 

II 

There is nothing new in Pantheism; — ^indeed no! 
But there are different kinds of pantheism. That 



THE RECONCILIATION 31 

the All is a manifestation, a revelation of God, — ^that 
it is in a manner, a dim and ungraspable manner, in 
some sort God Himself, — ^may be readily granted; 
but what does the All include? It were a strange 
kind of All that included mountains and trees, the 
forces of nature, and the visible material universe 
only, and excluded the intelligence, the will, the 
emotions, the individuality or personality, of which 
we ourselves are immediately conscious. Shall we 
possess these things and God not possess them? That 
would be no pantheism at all. Any power, any love, 
of which we ourselves are conscious does thereby cer- 
tainly exist ; and so it must exist in highly intensified 
and nobler form in the totality of things, — ^unless we 
make the grotesque assumption that in all the infinite 
universe we denizens of planet Earth are the highest. 
Let no worthy human attribute be denied to the Deity. 
In Anthropomorphism there are many errors, but 
there is one truth. Whatever worthy attribute be- 
longs to man, be it personality or any other, its exist- 
ence in the Universe is thereby admitted; it belongs 
to the All. 

The only conceivable way of denying personality, 
and effort, and failure, and renewed effort, and 
consciousness, and love, and hate too, for that matter, 
in the real whole of things, is to regard them as 
illusory, — physiological and purely material illusions 
in ourselves. Even so, they are in some sense there; 
they are not unreal, however they are to be accounted 
for. We must blink nothing; evolution is a truth, a 
strange and puzzling truth; "the whole creation 



32 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

groaneth and travaileth together;" and the most 
perfect of all the sons of men, the likest God this 
planet ever saw, He to whom many look for their idea 
of what God is, surely He taught us that suffering, 
and sacrifice, and wistful yearning for something not 
yet attainable, were not to be regarded as human 
attributes alone. 

Must we not admit the evil attributes also? In the 
Whole, yes; but one of our experiences is that there 
are grades of existence. We recognise that in our- 
selves the ape and tiger are dying out, that the germs 
of higher faculties have made their appearance; it is 
an intensification of the higher that we may infer in 
the more advanced grades of existence ; intensification 
of the lower Kes behind and beneath us. 

The inference or deduction of some of the attri- 
butes of Deity, from that which we can recognise as 
"the likest God within the soul," is a legitimate deduc- 
tion, if properly carried out ; and it is in close corres- 
pondence with the methods of physical science. It 
has been said that from the properties of a drop of 
water the possibility of a Niagara or an Atlantic 
might be inferred by a man who had seen or heard of 
neither.^ And it is true that by experiment on a small 
quantity of water a man with the brain of Newton 
and the mathematical power and knowledge of Lord 
Rayleigh could deduce by pure reasoning most if 
not all of the inorganic phenomena of an ocean ; and 
that not vaguely but definitely ; the existence of waves 
on its surface, the rate at which they would travel as 

1 Sir Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet. 



THE RECONCILIATION S3 

dependent upon distance from crest to crest, their 
maximum height, their length as depending on depth 
of sea; the existence of ripples also, going at a dif- 
ferent pace and following a different law ; the break- 
ing of waves upon a shore; the tides also; the ocean 
currents caused by inequalities of temperature, and 
many other properties which are realised in an actual 
ocean: — not as topographical realities indeed, but as 
necessary theoretical consequences of the hypothetical 
existence of so great a mass of water. Reasoning 
from the small to the great is legitimate reasoning, 
notwithstanding that by increase of size phenomena 
wholly different and at first sight unexpected come 
into being. No one not a mathematician looking at 
a drop of water could infer the Atlantic billows or 
the tides ; but they are all there in embryo, given gravi- 
tation; and yet not there in actuality in even the 
smallest degree. People sometimes think that 
increase of size is mere magnification, and introduces 
no new property. They are mistaken. Waves 
could not be on a drop, nor tides either, nor water- 
spouts, nor storms. The simple fact that the earth is 
large makes it retain an atmosphere ; and the existence 
of an atmosphere enhances the importance of a globe 
beyond all comparison, and renders possible plant 
and animal life. The simple fact that the sun is very 
large makes it hot, i,e, enables it to generate heat, and 
so fits it to be the centre and source of energy to 
worlds of habitable activity. 

To suppose that the deduction of divine attributes 
by intensification of our own attributes must neces- 



S4, SCIENCE AND FAITH 

sarily result in a "magnified non-natural man" is to 
forget these facts of physical science. If the rea- 
soning is bad, or the data insufficient, the result is 
worthless, but the method is legitimate, though far 
from easy; and it is hardly to be expected that the 
science of theology can yet have had its Newton, or 
even its Copernicus/ At present it is safest to walk 
by faith and inspiration; and it is the saint and 
prophet rather than the theologian whom humanity 
would prefer to trust. 

Ill 

Now let us go back to our groping inquiry — to the 
series of questions left unanswered in the latter 
portion of Chapter I — and ask, what then of prayer, 
regarded scientifically; of miracle, if we like to call 
it miracle; of the region not only of emotion and in- 
telligence, but of active work, guidance, and inter- 
ference? Are these, after all, so rigorously excluded 
by the reign of law? Are not these also parts of its 
kingdom? Shall law apply only to the inorganic and 
the non-living? Shall it not rule the domain of hfe 

1 Theologians may differ from this estimate; and if so, I defer to 
their opinion. It is well known that the topics slightly glanced at in 
the first half of this section have been profoundly studied by them; 
but. the subject is so difficult that an outsider can hardly assume that 
as much progress has been made in Theology as in the physical sciences. 
Not so much progress has been made even in the biological sciences as 
in the more specifically physical. It is sometimes said that biology has 
had its Newton, but it is not so: Darwin was its Copernicus, and 
revolutionised ideas as the era of Copernicus did. Newton did not 
revolutionise ideas: his was a synthetic and deductive era. 



THE RECONCILIATION 35 

and of mind too? Speaking or thinking of the 
Universe, we must exclude no part; 

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
Whose body nature is, and God the soul;" 

" For as the reasonable soul and human flesh is one man " — 

SO God and man constitute a unity, — a unity char- 
acterized by moral freedom in accordance with law. 

Let us take this question of guidance. We must 
see it in action now or never. Do we see it now? 
Orthodox theology vaguely assumes it; orthodox 
science sees it not at all. What is the truth? Is the 
blindness of science subjective or objective? Is the 
vision absent because there is nothing to see or be- 
cause we have shut our eyes, and have declined to con- 
template a region of dim and misty fact? 

Take the origin of species by the persistence of 
favourable variations, how is the appearance of those 
same favourable variations accounted for? Except 
by artificial selection, not at all. Given their appear- 
ance, their development by struggle and inheritance 
and survival can be explained; but that they arose 
spontaneously, by random change without purpose, 
is an assertion which cannot be made. Does anyone 
think that the skill of the beaver, the instinct of the 
bee, the genius of a man, arose by chance, and that 
its presence is accounted for by handing down and by 
survival? What struggle for existence vdll explain 
the advent of Beethoven? What pitiful necessity 
for earning a living as a dramatist will educe for us 



S6 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

Shakespeare? These things are beyond science ©f 
the orthodox type ; then let it be silent and deny noth- 
ing in the Universe till it has at least made an honest 
effort to comprehend the whole. 

Genius, however, science has made an effort not 
wholly to ignore; but take other human faculties — 
Premonition, Inspiration, Prevision, Telepathy — 
what is the meaning of these things? Orthodox science 
refuses to contemplate them, orthodox theology also 
looks at some of them askance. Many philosophers 
have relegated them to the region of the unconscious, 
or the subconscious, where dwell things of nothing 
worth. A few Psychologists are beginning to attend. 

Men of religion can hold aloof or not as they please : 
probably they had better hold aloof until the scientific 
basis of these things has been rendered more secure. 
At present they are beyond the pale of science, but 
they are some of them inside the Universe of fact, — 
all of them, as I now begin to believe, — and their 
meaning must be extracted. So long as this region is 
ignored, dogmatic science should be silent. It has a 
right to its own adopted region, it has no right to be 
heard outside. It cannot see guidance, it cannot rec- 
ognise the meaning of the whole trend of things, the 
constant leadings, the control, the help, the revela- 
tions, the beckonings, beyond our normal bodily and 
mental powers. No, for it will not look. What be- 
comes of an intelligence which has left this earth? 
^Vhence comes the nascent intelligence which arrives? 
What is the meaning of our human personality and 
individuality? Did we spring into existence a few 



THE RECONCILIATION 37 

years ago? Do we cease to exist a few years hence? 
It does not know. It does not want to know. 

Does theology seek enlightenment any more ener- 
getically? No, it is satisfied with its present informa- 
tion, which some people mistake for divine knowledge 
on these subjects. Divine knowledge is perhaps not 
obtained so easily. 

At present, in the cosmic scheme we strangely draw 
the line at man. We know of every grade of animal 
life from the amoeba upwards, with some shght hiatus 
here and there, — ^the lowest being single cells indis- 
tinguishable from plants, — ^but the series terminates 
with man. From man the scale of existence is sup- 
posed to step to God. Is it not somewhat sudden? 
The total descent from man to the amoeba is an in- 
comparably smaller interval. Yet that is a deep 
dechvity; profound, but not infinite. Why this sud- 
den jump from the altitude of man into infinity? 
Are there no intermediate states of existence? 

Perhaps on other planets, — ^yes, bodily existence 
on other planets is probable, not necessarily on any 
planet of our solar system, but that is a trifle in the 
visible universe; it is as our little five-roomed house 
among all the dwellings of mankind. But why on 
other planets only? Why bodily existence only? 
Why think solely of those incarnate personahties 
from whom, by exigencies of place, we are most iso- 
lated? Because we feel more akin to such, and we 
know of no others. A good answer so far, and a 
true. But do we wish to learn? Have we our 
minds open? A few men of science have adduced 



88 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

evidence of intelligence not wholly inaccessible and 
yet not familiarly accessible, intelligence perhaps a 
part of ourselves, perhaps a part of others, intelli- 
gence which seems closely connected with the region 
of genius, of telepathy, of clairvoyance, to which I 
have briefly referred. 

Suppose for a moment that there were a God. 
Science has never really attempted to deny His ex- 
istence. Conceive a scientific God. How would He 
work? Surely not by speech or by intermittent per- 
sonal interference. He would be in, and among, and 
of, the whole scheme of things. The universe is 
governed by law; effect is connected with cause; ^ if a 
thing moves it is because something moves it, ^ effects 
are due and only due to agents. If there be guidance 
or control, it must be by agents that it is exerted. 
Then what in the scheme of things would be His 
agents? 

Surely among such agents we must recognise our- 
selves: we can at least consider how we and other 
animals work. Watch the bird teaching its young to 
fly, the mother teaching a child to read, the states- 
man nursing the destiny of a new-born nation. Is 
there no guidance there? 

What is the meaning of legislation and municipal 
government, and acts of reform, and all the struggle 
after better lives for ourselves and others? 

Pure automatism, say some ; an illusion of free will. 
Possibly; but even a dream is not an absolute nonen- 

1 If this involves controversy, then sequent with antecedent. 

2 This I wish to maintain in spite of controversy. 



THE RECONCILIATION 39 

tity ; the effort, however it be expressed or accounted 
for, exists. 

What is all the effort — ^regarded scientifically — 
but the action of the totahty of things trying to im- 
prove itself, striving still to evolve something higher, 
holier, and happier, out of an inchoate mass? There 
may be many other ways of regarding it, but this is 
one. Failures, mistakes, sins, — ^yes, they exist ; evolu- 
tion would be meaningless if perfection were already 
attained; but surely even now we see some progress, 
surely the effort of our saints is bearing fruit. This 
planet has labored long and patiently for the advent 
of a human race, for millions of years it was the abode 
of strange beasts, and now recently it has become the 
abode of man. What but imperfection would you 
expect? May it not be suggested that conscious evil 
or vice looms rather large in our eyes, oppresses us 
with a somewhat exaggerated sense of its cosmic im- 
portance, because it is peculiarly characteristic of the 
human stage of development : the lower animals know 
little or nothing of it; they may indeed do things 
which in men would be sinful, but that is just what 
sin is — reversion to a lower type after perception of 
a higher. The consciousness of crime, the active 
pursuit of degradation, does not arise till something 
like human intelligence is reached; and only a little 
higher up it ceases again. It appears to be a stage 
rather rapidly passed through in the cosmic scheme. 
Greed, for instance, greed in the widest sense, accu- 
mulation for accumulation's sake: it is a human 
defect, and one responsible for much misery to-day; 



40 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

but it arose recently, and already it is felt to be below 
the standard of the race. A stage very little above 
present humanity, not at all above the higher grades 
of present humanity, and we shall be free from it 
again. 

Let us be thankful we have got thus far, and 
struggle on a little farther. It is our destiny, and 
whether here or elsewhere it will be accomplished. 

We are God's agents, visible and tangible agents, 
and we can help ; we ourselves can answer some kinds 
of prayer, so it be articulate; we ourselves can inter- 
fere with the course of inanimate nature, can make 
waste places habitable and habitable places waste. 
Not by breaking laws do we ever influence nature — 
we cannot break a law of nature, it is not brittle, we 
only break ourselves if we try — but by obeying 
them. In acordance with law we have to act, but act 
we can and do, and through us acts the Deity. 

And perhaps not alone through us. We are the 
highest bodily organisms on this material planet, and 
the material control of it belongs to us. It is subject 
to the laws of Physics and to the laws of our minds 
operating through our bodies. If there are other 
beings near us they do not trespass. It is our sphere, 
so far as Physics are concerned. Of any excep- 
tions to this statement, stringent proof must be forth- 
coming. 

Assertions are made that under certain strange 
conditions physical interference does occur; but there 
is always a person of unusual type present when 
these things happen, and until we know more of the 



THE RECONCILIATION 41 

power of the unconscious human personahty, it is 
simplest to assume that these physical acts are due, 
whether consciously, or unconsciously, to that person. 

But what about our mental acts ? We can operate 
on each other's minds through our physical envelope, 
by speech and writing and in other ways, "but we can 
do more : it appears that we can operate at a distance, 
by no apparent physical organ or medium; if by 
mechanism at all, then by mechanism at present un- 
known to us. 

Supposing, then, that we are open to influence 
from each other by non-corporeal methods, may we 
not be open also to influence from beings belonging 
to another order? And if so, may we not be aided, 
inspired, guided, by a cloud of witnesses, — ^not wit- 
nesses only, but helpers, agents like ourselves of the 
immanent God? 

How do we know that in the mental sphere these 
cannot answer prayer, as we in the physical? It is 
not a speculation only, it is a question for experience 
to decide. Are we conscious of guidance ; do we feel 
that prayers .are answered? that power to do, and to 
will, and to think, is given us? Many there are who 
with devout thankfulness will say yes. 

They attribute it to the Deity; so can we attribute 
everything to the Deity, from thunder and hghtning 
down to daily bread; but is it direct action? Does He 
not distribute the work among agents? That is what 
analogy suggests, but it is difficult to discriminate; 
and it is not necessary; the whole is linked together, 

"Bound by gold chains about the feet of God," 



42 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

and through it all His energising Spirit runs. On 
any hypothesis it must be to the Lord that we pray — • 
to the highest we know or can conceive ; but the answer 
shall come in ways we do not know, and there must 
always be a far Higher than ever we can conceive. 

Religious people seem to be losing some of their 
faith in prayer: they think it scientific not to pray in 
the sense of simple petition. They may be right: it 
may be the highest attitude never to ask for anything 
specific, only for acquiescence. If saints feel it so, 
they are doubtless right but, so far as ordinary 
science has anything to say to the contrary, a more 
childlike attitude might turn out truer, more in ac- 
cordance with the total scheme. Prayer for a fancied 
good that might really be an injury, would be foolish; 
prayer for breach of law would be not foolish only 
but profane; but who are we to dogmatise too 
positively concerning law? A martyr may have 
prayed that he should not feel the fire. Can it be 
doubted that, whether through what we call hypnotic 
suggestion or by some other name, the granting of it 
was at least possible? Prayer, we have been told, is 
a mighty engine of achievement, but we have ceased 
to believe it. Why should we be so incredulous? 
Even in medicine, for instance, it is not really absurd 
to suggest that drugs and no prayer may be almost as 
foolish as prayer and no drugs.^ Mental and phys- 

1 Diseases are like weeds ; gardening is a bacteriological problem. 
Some bacteria are good and useful and necessary; they act in digestion, 
in manures, etc.; others are baleful and mean disease. The gardener, 
like the physician, has to cultivate the plants and eradicate the weeds. 



THE RECONCILIATION 43 

ical are interlocked. The crudities of "faith-healing" 
have a germ of truth, perhaps as much truth as can 
be claimed by those who condemn them. How do we 
know that each is not ignoring one side, that each is 
but half educated, each only adopting half measures? 
The whole truth may be completer and saner than the 
sectaries dream: more things may be 

**wrought by prayer 
Than this world dreams of." 

We are not bodies alone, nor spirits alone, but both; 
our bodies isolate us, our spirits unite us: if I may 
venture on the construction of two lines, we are like 

Floating lonely icebergs, our crests above the ocean. 
With deeply submerged portions united by the sea. 

The conscious part is knowing; the subconscious 
part is ignorant : yet the subconscious can achieve re- 
sults the conscious can by no means either understand 
or perform. Witness the physical operations of "sug- 
gestion" and the occasional lucidity of trance. 

Each one of us has a great region of the sub- 

If he ignores the existence of weeds and says they are all plants, he 
speaks truth as a botanist, but is not a practical gardener. If he says, 
"Gardening is all effort on my part, and nothing comes from the sky, 
I will dig and I will water, I care not for casual rain or for sun," he 
errs foolishly on one side. If he says, "The sun and the rain do every- 
thing, there is no need for my exertion," he errs on the other side, and 
errs more dangerously; because he can abstain from action, whereas he 
cannot exclude rain and sun, however much he presumes to ignore them: 
he ought to be a part of the agency at work. Sobriety and sanity con- 
sist in recognising aU the operative causes — spiritual, mental, and ma- 
terial. 



44 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

conscious, to which we do not and need not attend: 
only let us not deny it, let us not cut ourselves off 
from its sustaining power. If we have instinct for 
worship, for prayer, for communion with saints or 
with Deity, let us trust that instinct, for there hes 
the true realm of religion. We may try to raise the 
subconscious region into the light of day, and study 
it with our intellect also; but let us not assume that 
our present conscious intelligence is already so well 
informed that its knowledge exhausts or determines 
or bounds the region of the true and the impossible. 

IV 

As to what is scientifically possible or impossible, 
anything not self -contradictory or inconsistent with 
other truth is possible. Speaking from our present 
scientific ignorance, and in spite of the extract from 
Professor Tyndall quoted previously, this statement 
must be accepted as literally true, for all we 
know to the contrary. There may be reasons why 
certain things do not occur: our experience tells us 
that they do not, and we may judge that there is some 
reason why they do not. There may be an adapta- 
tion, an arrangement among the forces of nature — 
the forces of nature in their widest sense — ^which en- 
chains them and screens us from their destructive 
action; after the same sort of fashion as the atmos- 
phere screens the earth from the furious meteoric 
buffeting it would otherwise encounter on its portent- 



i 



THE RECONCILIATION 45 

ous journey through ever new and untried depths of 
space. ^ 

We may indeed be well protected; we must, else 
we should not be here; but as to what is possible — 
think of any lower creature, low enough in the scale 
of existence to ignore us, and to treat us, too, as 
among the forces of nature, and then let us bethink 
ourselves of how we may appear, not to God or to any 
infinite being, but to some personal intelligence high 
above us in the scale of existence. Consider a colony 
of ants, and conceive them conscious at their level; 
what know they of fate and of the future? Much 
what we know. They may think themselves governed 
by uniform law — ^uniform, that is, even to their un- 
derstanding — ^the march of the seasons, the struggle 
for existence, the weight of the soil, the properties of 
matter as they encounter it — ^no more. For centuries 
they may have continued thus; when one day, quite 
unexpectedly, a shipwrecked sailor strolling round 
kicks their ant-hill over. To and fro they run, over- 
whelmed with the catastrophe. What shall hinder his 
crushing them with his heel? Laborare est or are in 
their case. Let them watch him and see, or fancy 
that he sees, in their movements the signs of industry, 
of system, of struggle against untoward circum- 
stances; let him note the moving of eggs, the trying 
to save and to repair — ^the act of destruction may by 
that means be averted. 

iThe earth does not describe anything like a closed curve per annum; 
the sun advances rather more than ten miles per second, in what is prac- 
tically a straight line. 



46 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

Just as our earth is midway among the lumps of 
matter, neither small like a meteoric stone, nor 
gigantic like a sun, so may be the place we, the human 
race, occupy in the scale of existence. All our ordi- 
nary views are based on the notion that we are highest 
in the scale; upset that notion and anything is possi- 
ble. Possible, but we have to ascertain the facts : not 
what might, but what does occur. Into the lives of 
the lower creatures caprice assuredly seems to enter; 
the treatment of a fly by a child is capricious, and may 
be regarded as puzzling to the fly. As we rise in the 
scale of existence we hope that things get better; we 
have experience that they do. It may be said that 
up to a point in the scale of life vice and caprice 
increase ; that the lower organisms and the plant world 
know nothing of them, and that man has been most 
wicked of all ; but they reach a maximum at a certain 
stage — a stage the best of the human race have 
already passed — and we need not postulate either vice 
or caprice in our far superiors. Men have thought 
themselves the sport of the gods before now, but let 
us hope they were mistaken. Such thoughts would 
lead to madness and despair. We do not know the 
laws which govern the interaction of different orders 
of intelligence, nor do we know how much may de- 
pend on our own attitude and conduct. It may be 
that prayer is an instrument which can control or in- 
fluence higher agencies, and by its neglect we may be 
losing the use of a mighty engine to help on our lives 
and those of others. 

The Universe is huge and awful every way, we 



THE EECONCILIATION 47 

might SO easily be crushed by it; we need the help of 
every agency available, and if we had no helpers we 
should stand a poor chance. The lonehness of it when 
we leave the planet would be appalling; sometimes 
even here the loneliness is great. 

What the "protecting atmosphere" for our disem- 
bodied souls may be, I know not. Some may liken 
the protection to the care of a man for a dog, of a 
woman for a child, of a far-seeing minister for a race 
of bewildered slaves ; while others may dash aside the 
contemplation of all intermediate agencies, and feel 
themselves safe and enfolded in the protecting love 
of God Himself. 

The region of true Religion and the region of a 
completer Science are one. 



CHAPTER III 
RELIGION, SCIENCE AND MIRACLE 

I. Science and Religion 

THERE was a time when religious people dis- 
trusted the increase of knowledge, and con- 
demned the mental attitude which takes delight in its 
pursuit, being in dread lest part of the foundation 
of their faith should be undermined by a too ruthless 
and unquahfied spirit of investigation. 

There has been a time when men engaged in the 
quest of systematic knowledge had an idea that the 
results of their studies would be destructive not only 
of outlying accretions but of substantial portions of 
the edifice of religion which has been gradually 
erected by the prophets and saints of humanity. 

Both these epochs will soon belong to history. 
Thoughtful men realise that truth is the important 
thing, and that to take refuge in any shelter less sub- 
stantial than the truth is to render themselves liable 
to abject exposure when a storm comes on. Few are 
not aware that it is a sign of unbalanced judgment 
to conclude, on the strength of a few momentous 
discoveries, that the whole structure of religious be- 
lief, built up through the ages by the developing 

48 



RELIGION, SCIENCE AND MIRACLE 49 

Human race from fundamental emotions and instincts 
and experiences, is unsubstantial and insecure. 

The business of Science, including in that term, for 
present purposes, philosophy and the science of criti- 
cism, is with foundations; the business of Religion is 
with superstructure. Science has laboriously laid a 
solid foundation of great strength, and its votaries 
have rejoiced over it; though their joy must perforce 
be somewhat dumb and inexpressive until the more 
vocal apostles of art and literature and music are able 
to decorate it with their light and more winsome 
tracery: so for the present the structure of science 
strikes a stranger as severe and forbidding. In a 
neighbouring territory Rehgion occupies a splendid 
building — a gorgeously-decorated palace; concerning 
which. Science, not yet having discovered a satisfac- 
tory basis, is sometimes inclined to suspect that it is 
phantasmal and mainly supported on legend. 

Without any controversy it may be admitted that 
the foundation and the superstructure, as at present 
known, are inadequately fitted together; and that 
there is, in consequence, an apparent dislocation. 
Men of science have exclaimed that all solid truth 
is in their keeping; adopting in that sense the words 
of the poet: 

"To the solid ground 
Of Nature trusts the mind which builds for aye." 

On the other hand men of Religion snugly 
ensconced in their traditional eyrie, and objecting to 
the digging and the hammering below, have shud- 



50 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

dered as the artificial props and pillars by which they 
supposed it to be buttressed gave way one after 
another; and have doubted whether they could 
continue to enjoy peace in their exalted home if it 
turned out that part of it was suspended in air, with- 
out any perceptible foundation at all, like the 
phantom city in "Gareth and Lynette" whereof it 
could be said: 

"the city is built 
To music, therefore never built at aU, 
And therefore built for ever." 

Remarks as to lack of solid foundation may be re- 
garded as typical of the mild kind of sarcasm which 
people with superficial smattering of popular science 
sometimes try to pour upon religion. They think that 
to accuse a system of being devoid of solid foundation 
is equivalent to denying its stability. On the contrary, 
as Tennyson no doubt perceived, the absence of any- 
thing that may crumble or decay, or be shaken by 
an earthquake, is a safeguard rather than a danger. 
It is the absence of material foundation that makes 
the Earth itself, for instance, so secure: if it were 
based upon a pedestal, or otherwise solidly supported, 
we might be anxious about the stability and dura- 
bility of the support. As it is, it floats securely in 
the emptiness of space. 

Similarly the persistence of its diurnal spin is se- 
cured by the absence of anything to stop it : not by any 
maintaining mechanism. 

To say that a system does not rest upon one special 
fact is not to impugn its stability. The body of 



RELIGION, SCIENCE AND MIRACLE 51 

scientific truth rests on no solitary material fact or 
group of facts, but on a basis of harmony and con- 
sistency between facts: its support and ultimate 
sanction is of no material character. To conceive of 
Christianity as built upon an Empty Tomb, or any 
other plain physical or historical fact, is dangerous. 
To base it upon the primary facts of consciousness 
or upon direct spiritual experience, as Paul did, is 
safer. ^ There are parts of the structure of Religion 
wliich may safely be underpinned by physical science : 
the theory of death and of continued personal exist- 
ence is one of them; there are many others and there 
will be more. But there are and always will be vast 
religious regions for which that kind of scientific 
foundation would be an impertinence, though a 
scientific contribution is appropriate. Perhaps these 
may be summed up in some such phrase as *'the rela- 
tion of the soul to God." 

Assertions are made concerning material facts in 
the name of religion; these science is bound to 
criticise. Testimony is borne to inner personal ex- 
perience; on that physical science does well to be 
silent. Nevertheless many of us are impressed with 
the conviction that everything in the universe may be- 
come intelligible if we go the right way to work ; and 

1 It will be represented that I am here intending to cast doubt upon 
a fundamental tenet of the Church. That is not my intention. My con- 
tention here is merely that a great structure should not rest upon a 
point. So might a la%vyer properly say: "To base a legal decision upon 
the position of a comma, or other punctuation, — however undisputed its 
occurrence — is dangerous; to base it upon the general sense of a docu- 
ment is safer." 



52 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

SO we are coming to recognise, on the one hand, that 
every system of truth must be intimately connected 
with every other, and that this connection will con- 
stitute a trustworthy support as soon as it is revealed 
by the progress of knowledge ; and on the other hand, 
that the extensive foundation of truth now being laid 
by scientific workers will ultimately support a gor- 
geous building of aesthetic f eehng and religious faith. 

Theologians have been apt to be too easily satisfied 
with a pretended foundation that would not stand 
scientific scrutiny; they seem to believe that the re- 
ligious edifice, with its mighty halls for the human 
spirit, can rest upon some event or statement, instead 
of upon man's nature as a whole ; and they are apt to 
decline to reconsider their formulas in the light of 
fuller knowledge and development. 

Scientific men, on the other hand, have been liable 
to suppose that no foundation which they have not 
themselves laid can be of a substantial character, 
thereby ignoring the possibility of an ancestral 
accumulation of sound through unformulated ex- 
perience. And a few of the less considerate, about a 
quarter of a century ago, amused themselves by in- 
stituting a kind of jubilant rat-hunt under the ven- 
erable theological edifice: a procedure necessarily 
obnoxious to its occupants. The exploration was un- 
pleasant, but its results have been purifying and 
healthful, and the permanent substratum of fact will 
in due time be cleared of the decaying refuse of 
centuries. 

Some of the more seriously conducted controversy 



RELIGION, SCIENCE AND MIRACLE 5^ 

between the two contending parties turned upon 
those frequently discussed topics — the possibility of 
the Miraculous, and the efficacy of Prayer. Let us 
elaborate the thesis maintained in the last chapter, 
by discussing further, though still briefly, these two 
connected subjects. 

II. Meaning or Miracle 

We must begin by admitting that the term "mira- 
cle" is ambiguous, and that no discussion which takes 
that term as a basis can be very fruitful, since the 
combatants may all be meaning different things. 

1. One user of the term may mean merely an un- 
usual event of which we do not know the history and 
cause, a bare wonder or prodigy ; such an event as the 
course of nature may, for all we know, bring about 
once in ten thousand years or so, leaving no record of 
its occurrence in the past and no anticipatory proba- 
bility of its re-occurrence in the future. The raining 
down of fire on Sodom, or on Pompeii; the sudden en- 
gulphing of Korah, or of Marcus Curtius, or, on a 
different plane, the advent of some transcendent 
genius, or even of a personality so lofty as to be 
called divine, may serve as examples. 

2. Another employer of the term "miracle" may 
add to this idea a definite hypothesis, and may mean 
an act due to unknown intelligent and living agencies 
operating in a self-willed and unpredictable manner, 
thus effecting changes that would not otherwise have 
occurred and that are not in the regular course of 
nature. The easiest example to think of is one 



54 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

wherein the lower animals are chiefly concerned; for 
instance, consider the case of the community of an 
ant-hill, on a lonely uninhabited island, undisturbed 
for centuries, whose dwelling is kicked over one day 
by a shipwrecked sailor. They had reason to suppose 
that events were uniform, and all their difficulties 
ancestrally known; but they are perturbed by an un- 
intelligible miracle. A different illustration is af- 
forded by the presence of an obtrusive but unsus- 
pected live insect in a galvanometer or other measur- 
ing instrument in a physical laboratory; whereby 
metrical observations would be complicated, and all 
regularity perturbed, in a puzzling and capricious 
and, to half -instructed knowledge, supernatural, or 
even diabolical, manner. Not dissimilar are some of 
the asserted events in a Seance Room. 

3. Another may use the term "miracle" to mean the 
utilisation of unknown laws say of healing or of com- 
munication; laws unknown and unformulated, but 
instinctively put into operation by mental activity of 
some kind, — sometimes through the unconscious in- 
fluence of so-called self-suggestion, sometimes 
through the activity of another mind, or through the 
personal agency of highly gifted beings, operating 
on others; laws whereby time and space appear tem- 
porarily suspended, or extraordinary cures are ef- 
fected, or other effects produced, such as the levita- 
tions and other physical phenomena related of the 
saints. 

4. Another may incorporate with the word "mira- 
cle" a still further infusion of theory, and may mean 



RELIGION, SCIENCE AND MIRACLE 55 

always a direct interposition of Divine Providence, 
whereby at some one time and place a perfectly 
unique occurrence is brought about, which is out of re- 
lation with the estabhshed order of things, is not due to 
what has gone before, and is not Hkely to occur again. 
The most striking examples of what can be claimed 
under this head are connected with the personality of 
Jesus Christ, notably the Virgin Birth and the Empty 
Tomb ; by which I mean the more material and con- 
troversial aspects of those generally accepted doc- 
trines — the Incarnation and the Resurrection. 

To summarise this part, the four categories are: 
:(1) A natural or orderly though unusual portent, 
(2) a disturbance due to unknown live or capricious 
agencies, (3) a utilisation by mental or spiritual 
power of unknown laws, (4) direct interposition of 
the Deity. 

III. Arguments concerning the Miraculous. 

In some cases an argument concerning the so-called 
miraculous will turn upon the question whether such 
things are theoretically possible. 

In other cases it will turn upon whether or not 
they have ever actually happened. 

In a third case the argument will be directed to the 
question whether they happened or not on some par- 
ticular occasion. 

And in a fourth case the argument will hinge upon 
the particular category under which any assigned oc- 
currence is to be placed: — 
, For instance, take a circumstance which undoubt- 



56 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

edly has occurred, one upon the actual existence of 
which there can be no dispute, and yet one of which 
the history and manner is quite unknown. Take, for 
instance, the origin of Life; or to be more definite, 
say the origin of Hfe on any given planet, the Earth 
for instance. There is practically no doubt that the 
Earth was once a hot and molten and sterile globe. 
There is no doubt at all that it is now the abode of an 
immense variety of living organic nature. How did 
that life arise? Is it an event to be placed under 
head ( 1 ) , as an unexpected outcome of the ordinary 
course of nature, a development naturally following 
upon the formation of extremely complex molecular 
aggregates — protoplasm and the like — as the Earth 
cooled; or must it be placed under head (4) , as due to 
the direct Fiat of the Eternal? 

Again, take the existence of Christianity as a living 
force in the world of to-day. This is based upon a 
series of events of undoubtedly substantial truth cen- 
tering round a historical personage ; under which cate- 
gory is that to be placed? Was his advent to be re- 
garded as analogous to the appearance of a mighty 
genius such as may at any time revolutionise the 
course of human history; or is he to be regarded as a 
direct manifestation and incarnation of the Deity 
Himself? 

I am using these great themes as illustrations 
merely, for our present purpose; I have no intention 
of entering upon them in this chapter. They are 
questions which have been asked, and presumably an- 
swered, again and again; and it is on lines such as 



RELIGION, SCIENCE AND MIRACLE 57 

these that debates concerning the miraculous are 
usually conducted. But what I want to say is that 
so long as we keep the discussion on these lines, and 
ask this sort of question, though we shall succeed in 
emphasizing difficulties, we shall not progress far to- 
wards a solution of any of them: nor shall we gain 
much aid towards life. 

IV. Law and Guidance 

The way to progress is not thus to lose ourselves in 
detail and in confusing estimates of possibilities, but 
to consider two main issues which may very briefly be 
formulated thus: 

1. Are we to believe in irrefragable law? 

2. Are we to believe in spiritual guidance? 

If we affirm the first of these issues we accept an 
orderly and systematic universe, with no arbitrary 
cataclysms and no breaks in its essential continuity. 
Catastrophes occur, but they occur in the regular 
course of events, they are not brought about by capri- 
cious and lawless agencies; they are a part of the 
entire cosmos, regulated on the principle of unity and 
uniformity: though to the dwellers in any time and 
place, from whose senses most of the cosmos is hid- 
den, they may appear to be sudden and portentous 
dislocations of natural order. 

So much is granted if we accept the first of the 
above issues. If we accept the second, we accept a 
purposeful and directed universe^ carrying on its evo- 



58 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

lutionary processes from an inevitable past into an 
anticipated future with a definite aim; not left to the 
random control of inorganic forces like a motor-car 
which has lost its driver, but permeated throughout 
by mind and intention and foresight and will. Not 
mere energy, but constantly directed energy — the 
energy being controlled by something which is not 
energy, nor akin to energy, something which presum- 
ably is immanent in the universe and is akin to life 
and mind. 

The alternative to these two beliefs is a universe of 
random chance and capricious disorder, not a cosmos 
or universe at all — a multiverse rather. Consequently 
I take it that we all hold to one or other of these two 
beliefs. But do we and can we hold to both? 

So far as I conceive my present mission, it is to 
urge that the two beliefs are not inconsistent with 
each other, and that we may and should contemplate 
and gradually feel our way towards accepting both. 

1. We must realise that the Whole is a single 

undeviating law-saturated cosmos; 

2. But we must also reahse that the Whole con- 

sists not of matter and motion alone, nor 
yet of spirit and will alone, but of both and 
all; we must even yet further, and enor- 
mously, enlarge our conception of what the 
Whole contains. 

Scientific men have preached the first of these de- 
siderata, but have been liable to take a narrow view 



RELIGION, SCIENCE AND MIRACLE 59 

regarding the second. Keenly alive to law, and 
knowledge, and material fact, they have been occa- 
sionally blind to art, to emotion, to poetry, and to the 
higher mental and spiritual environment which in- 
spires and glorifies the realm of knowledge. 

The temptation of religious men has also lain in the 
direction of too narrow exclusiveness ; for they have 
been so occupied with their own conceptions of 
the fulness of things that they have failed to grasp 
what is implied by a strictly orderly cosmos. They 
have allowed the emotional content to overpower 
the intellectual, and have too often ignored, disliked, 
and practically rejected, an integral portion of the 
scheme, — appearing to desire, what no one can really 
wish for, a world of uncertainty and caprice, where 
effects can be produced without adequate cause, and 
where the connection of antecedent and consequent 
can be arbitrarily dislocated. 

The same error has therefore dogged the steps of 
both classes of men. An acceptance of miracle, in 
the crude sense of arbitrary intervention and special 
providence, is appropriate to those who feel strangled 
in the grip of inorganic and mechanical law, with- 
out being able to reconcile it with the idea of friendly 
guidance and intelligent control. And a denial of 
miracle, in every sense, that is of all providential lead- 
ing, and all controlling intelligence, may be the out- 
come of the same kind of inability in people of dif- 
ferent temperament, — people who cannot recognise a 
directing intelligence in the midst of law and order, 
who regard the absence of dislocation and inter- 



60 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

ference as a mark of the inorganic, the mechanical, 
the inexorable. Wherefore the denial of miracle has 
often led to a sort of practical atheism and to an as- 
sertion of the valuelessness of prayer. 

But to those who are able to combine the acceptance 
of both the above faiths, prayer is part of the orderly 
cosmos, and may be an efficient portion of the guid- 
ing and controlling will ; somewhat as the desire of the 
inhabitants of a town for a civic improvement may be 
a part of the agency which ultimately brings it about, 
no matter whether the city be representatively or au- 
tocratically governed. 

The two beHefs cannot be logically and effectively 
combined by those who think of themselves as some- 
thing detached from and outside the cosmos, operat- 
ing on it externally and seeking to modify its mani- 
festations by vain petitions addressed to a system of 
ordered force. To such persons the above proposi- 
tions must seem contradictory or mutually exclusive. 
But if we can grasp the idea that we ourselves are an 
intimate part of the whole scheme, that our wishes 
and desires are a part of the controlling and guiding 
will, — ^then our mental action cannot but be efficient, 
if we exercise it in accordance with the highest and 
truest laws of our being. 

V. Miracle and Science 

How mind can act on matter at all is at present a 
puzzle. Life is clearly the intermediary, and a live 
thing can perform actions and bring about changes in 
the material world that cannot be predicted hy me- 



RELIGION, SCIENCE AND MIRACLE 61 

chanics and that would not otherwise have occurred. 
There have been many who believe that such changes 
aifect the conservation of energy, and render that 
law doubtful, unless life itself be one of the forms 
of energy. But my contention is that life is, from 
the mechanical point of view, not a force nor an 
energy, but only a guiding and directing influence: 
affecting the quantity of energy no whit. It directs 
terrestrial energy along a certain channel, it utihses 
the energies which are running to waste, so to speak, 
and guides them in a specific way; as a waterfall may 
be made to light a town instead of merely dashing 
itself picturesquely against rocks. 

This subject of "guidance" is a large one, and I 
must be brief. I have dealt with it in my book on 
Life and Matter; but it is a point of fundamental im- 
portance, and I will try to exhibit it still more clearly 
and illustrate what I mean by guidance, namely, the 
influencing of activity without "work," the direction 
of energy without generating it, the utiHsing and 
guiding existent activity for preconceived and pur- 
posed ends. To show that work is not necessary for 
guidance even in mechanics, we may instance the fol- 
lowing : 

A railway guides a train to its destination; while 
the engine supplies the energy and propels it. Any 
force exerted by the rails is perpendicular to the mo- 
tion and does no work; unless, indeed, by friction it 
exerts a retarding force not perpendicular to motion. 

But if this be used as a parable it may be objected 
that the exertion of force is itself a mechanical oper- 



62 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

ation, even though no work is done ; and that a force 
cannot act without altering the distribution of mo- 
mentum, though it must leave the amount unaltered. 

Quite true, action and reaction are always equal 
and opposite, and both are always to be found in the 
physical world. Life may call out a stress in that 
world which would not otherwise exist then and 
there ; but it sustains none of the reaction — ^never does 
it exert an unbalanced force, never does it generate 
any momentum — no more than it generates energy. 
It only directs operations which thoroughly obey the 
laws of mechanics, and from the mechanical point of 
view are complete in the physical world. 

Life and mind have determined where the rails 
shall be laid down, and when and whence and whither 
the trains are to be run, but they exert no iota of 
force upon them; so the distinction between a pro- 
pelling and a deflecting force is a needless distinction 
for our present purposes. Whenever a force is ex- 
erted it is exerted as a stress between two bodies, 
whether it be a working or a guiding force. 

But, for the kind of guidance exercised by hfe, 
force, through a common intermediary, is not a neces- 
sary one. A path can guide a traveller to his destina- 
tion without exerting any force upon him at all. 
Conversely, a railway time-table, emanating from the 
Traffic Manager's office, determines the running of 
many trains ; but it is not a form of energy, nor does 
it exert force. 

The liberation of energy can be accomplished by 
work entirely incommensurate with the result : and so 



RELIGION, SCIENCE AND MIRACLE 63 

ultimately it would appear that it can be achieved by 
none at all, through the mysterious intervention of the 
brain as a connector between the psychical and phys- 
ical worlds, which otherwise would not be in touch. 

All that a human being can do is to get some of 
the energy from the outside world into his muscles 
by the act of feeding; and when there it is amenable 
to nerve messages sent from his brain, and so ulti- 
mately from his mind, — ^which apparently has the 
power of liberating detents and pulling triggers in 
that strange physiological link with another order of 
existence. How the brain acts: how a thought or an 
act of will can liberate the energy of a brain cell in a 
particular direction: is not yet known. It belongs to 
the mysterious borderland between physics and psy- 
chology. ,We can only appeal to the fact of con- 
sciousness, and illustrate it by saying that a trigger 
can precipitate an explosion, of violence quite incom- 
mensurable with that of the energy required to pull 
the trigger ; and the work done in pulling the trigger 
results in infinitesimal local heat, of just the same 
magnitude whether the prepared explosion results or 
not: it is independent also of the direction and the 
epoch of the shot. The aim, and the moment at which 
to pull the trigger, are determined by the mind of the 
sportsman, without affecting the question of energy. 

Life is not energy, but it is the director of energy, 
and of matter. It achieves results which would not 
otherwise have occurred. Even plant hfe does that, 
the green leaves direct the energy of sunshine to the 
decomposition and re-invigoration of thoroughly 



64 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

burned and stable compounds, carbonic acid and 
water. 

Engineering and architectural operations produce 
Forth Bridges, and tunnels, and buildings of a char- 
acter instinct with mind and purpose. The organic 
energy needed for the operation is brought by the 
navvies in their tin cans, and they direct that energy 
so as to exert propulsive force and do the work; but 
the controlling mind is that of the architect and the 
engineer. 

The only thing that prevents our calling it a miracle 
is that we are so thoroughly accustomed to the occur- 
rence. 

Mind determines. Life directs. The material and 
energetic universe is dominated and controlled by 
these agencies; which utilise the energy they find 
available, and direct it into appropriate channels. 

Finally, whatever difficulties we may feel about 
understanding the process, we ought not to be accused 
of dualism by reason of our insistence on the separate 
categories of life and mind on the one hand, and 
body and mechanism on the other. However domi- 
nant one of these predicaments may be over the other, 
they may be all ultimately but parts of some compre- 
hensive whole. Domination or even antagonism be- 
tween the parts of a whole is common enough. One 
man can dominate or can oppose another, although 
both are members of the same race, nation, or family. 
The head can dominate a limb, though both are parts 
of a single body. So also can Mind and Life domi- 
nate and transcend matter and energy. And they do 



EELIGION, SCIENCE AND MIRACLE 65 

this just as effectually, even though in some ultimate 
monistic unity they can be all recognised as parts or 
aspects of some one stupendous Reality. 

VI. Miracle and Religion 

So much for general considerations, which in this 
case are by far the most important; we may now de- 
scend to a few practical remarks. When speaking of 
miracles, what people are usually interested in are 
miracles in detail; they have usually some special in- 
stances in their minds, and they want those instances 
discussed. Using the term "miracle" in quite a popu- 
lar sense, and meaning by it nothing defined or sus- 
ceptible of definition, but simply the list of miracles 
they find recorded in the Bible or in the lives of the 
Saints, they ask, "Has the progress of science rend- 
ered the occurrence of these things more or less prob- 
able?" The first and obvious answer, — ^that it has 
rendered them subjectively less probable, that is to 
say, less easy of acceptance than they were at the time 
of their record, or even fifty years ago, — is too mani- 
fest to require giving. For till recently they were 
hardly questioned, except here and there by a few 
adventurous spirits who were liable to be stigmatised 
as "infidel" for being faithful to their convictions. 

But if the subjective aspect is passed by as too ob- 
vious, and if it is asked whether science has made the 
occurrence of the so-called miracles objectively more 
reasonably probable, — it is controversial, but it is not 
absurd, to answer concerning several of them — "in 



66 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

some respects, yes": — an answer which is most readiljr 
appUcable to the miracles of heahng. And why? Be- 
cause in modern medical practice, especially as devel- 
oped on the Continent, some of these occurrences can 
be imitated to-day; for instance, the production, by 
self or other suggestion, of wounds analogous to the 
"stigmata." Whether this fact, assuming it for the 
moment to be a fact, is one to be welcomed or other- 
wise by interpreters of Holy Writ, is a question for 
themselves to answer. 

The reasonable scientific view is that a complete 
knowledge of nature would enable us to recognise the 
rationale of every event which ever occurred, or ever 
can occur; and so it would seem to follow concerning 
any given apparent prodigy — either that it did not 
happen as related, or else that it happened in accord- 
ance with natural laws of which at present we are 
more or less ignorant. Some of the popularly-quoted 
miracles certainly did not happen, and were never by 
competent judges really thought to have happened, as 
narrated by the poet or rhapsodist of the time. To 
regard the poetic suspension of the motion of the sun 
(or earth) as a scientific statement is absurd. But 
while it is mere illiteracy to suppose that all classes 
of recorded miracle represent statements of fact — 
since careful precision in recording fact is a rather 
modern accomplishment, and not likely to be regarded 
then, nor in some quarters even now, as a particularly 
desirable or edifying accomplishment, yet certain of 
them may be worthy of consideration, as at any rate 
believed by the recorder to have occurred as he states 



RELIGION, SCIENCE AND MIRACLE 67 

them; and, besides, as not being wholly outside the 
range of conceivable possibility. 

But in so far as they are recognised as reasonably 
possible, they surely lose their power as specifically 
religious evidence, and become merely a hint towards 
an extension of scientific fact. I suppose it must be 
admitted that the more natural and so to speak com- 
monplace an event becomes, the less exceptional re- 
ligious significance can be accorded to it. Neverthe- 
less it may be legitimate to recognise that a human 
being of specially lofty character may, perhaps inevi- 
tably, be endowed with faculties and powers beyond 
the present scope of the race: faculties and powers 
fully intelligible neither to himself nor to anyone else. 
Even a genius has an inkling of exceptional powers. 
No one can explain, or render ordinarily probable a 
priorij the existence of a child-prodigy capable of per- 
formances in music or in arithmetic beyond the power 
of nearly all adults. Genius combined with sainthood 
may achieve what to ordinary men are marvels and 
miracles. Even without sainthood, and without 
genius, some abnormally constituted species of the 
human race — ^possibly anticipating future develop- 
ment as a kind of premature sport, or possibly dis- 
playing the remains of ancestral powers now nearly 
lost to the race — are found to possess faculties un- 
usual and incredible, faculties which in fact are widely 
and vigorously disbelieved by nearly all who have not 
studied them. 

Whether a given prophet has extraordinary power, 
and how far his power extends, is a matter for evi- 



68 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

dence ; but whatever his power, it is by the content of 
his message that he is to be judged, not by some ac- 
companying extension of the customary control of 
mind over matter. All this is well-worn ground, and 
I refrain from emphasising a great number of obvious 
contentions, e,g.j, that it is quite wrong to accept a bad 
and immoral message because it is accompanied by 
conjuring tricks of amazing ingenuity; and the like. 
The worst of men can do things beyond the power of 
an insect, things which to its consciousness, if it had 
any, would be miraculous. 

Either there are modes of existence higher than 
that displayed by our ordinary selves, or there are not. 
If there are, it is the business of science to ascertain 
their existence and what they can do in the way of 
interaction with our material surroundings: it is not 
necessarily the business of religion at all, though like 
everything else it will have a bearing on religion. 
But, because it is a nascent and infantile branch of 
science, is it therefore of little importance or small 
interest? By no means. All these things are essen- 
tially worthy of investigation, and they will be in- 
vestigated by those who feel called to the work, 
although they are looked at askance by some of the 
scientific magnates of to-day. The gain of realising 
that they are unessential to religion and to human 
hopes and fears, is that their investigation can be 
conducted in a cool calm spirit, without prejudice 
and without preconception, with no object in view 
but simple ascertainment of truth. The atmosphere 
of reUgion should be recognised as enveloping and 



RELIGION, SCIENCE AND MIRACLE 69 

permeating everything, and should not be specially^ 
sought in signs and wonders. 

The atmosphere of religion should be recognised 
as enveloping and permeating everything; it should 
not be specially or exclusively sought as an emanation 
from signs and wonders. Strange and ultranormal 
things may happen, and are well worthy of study, 
but they are not to be regarded as especially holy. 
Some of them may represent either extension or sur- 
vival of human faculty, while others may be an in- 
evitable endowment or attribute of a sufficiently lofty 
character; but none of them can be accepted without 
investigation. Testimony concerning such things is 
to be treated in a sceptical and yet open-minded spirit ; 
the results of theory and experiment are to be util- 
ised, as in any other branch of natural knowledge; 
and indiscriminate dogmatic rejection is as inappro- 
priate as wholesale uncritical acceptance. 

The bearing on the hopes and fears of humanity 
of such unusual facts as can be verified may be con- 
siderable, but they bear no exceptional witness to 
guidance and control. Guidance and control, if ad- 
mitted at all, must be regarded as constant and con- 
tinuous; and it is just this uniform character that 
makes them so difficult to recognise. It is always 
difficult to perceive or apprehend anything which is 
perfectly regular and continuous. Those fish, for 
instance, which are submerged in ocean-depths, be- 
yond the reach of waves and tides, are probably 
utterly unconscious of the existence of water; and, 
however intelligent, they can have but little reason 



70 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

to believe in that medium, notwithstanding that their 
whole being, life, and motion, is dependent upon it 
from instant to instant. The motion of the earth, 
again, furious rush though it is — fifty times faster 
than a cannon ball — ^is quite inappreciable to our 
senses; it has to be inferred from celestial observa- 
tions, and it was strenuously disbelieved by the ag- 
nostics of an earlier day. 

Uniformity is always difficult to grasp — our senses 
are not made for it; and yet it is characteristic of 
everything that is most efficient. Jerks and jolts are 
easy to appreciate, but they do not conduce to prog- 
ress. Steady motion is what conveys us on our way, 
collisions are but a retarding influence. The seeker 
after miracle, in the exceptional and narrow or exclu- 
sive sense, is pining for a catastrophe ; the investigator 
of miracle, in the continuous and broad or compre- 
hensive sense, has the universe for a laboratory. 

VII. Human Experience 

Let us survey our position. 

We find ourselves for a few score years incarnate 
intelligences on this planet; we have not always been 
here, and we shall not always be here : we are here in 
fact, each of us, for but a very short period; but we 
can study the conditions of existence while here, and 
we perceive clearly that a certain amount of guidance 
and control are in our hands. For better for worse 
we can, and our legislators do, influence the destinies 
of the planet. The process is called "making his- 
tory." We can all, even the humblest, to some extent 



RELIGION, SCIENCE AND MIRACLE 71 

influence the destinies of individuals with whom we 
come into contact. We have therefore a certain sense 
of power and responsibihty. 

It is not Kkely that we are the only, or the highest, 
intelligent agents in the whole wide universe, nor 
that we possess faculties and powers denied to all 
else; nor is it likely that our own activity will be 
always as limited as it is now. The Parable of the 
Talents is full of meaning, and it contains a meaning 
that is not often brought out. 

It is absurd to deny the attributes of guidance and 
intelligence and personality and love to the Whole, 
seeing that we are part of the Whole, and are per- 
sonally aware of what we mean by those words in 
ourselves. These attributes are existent therefore, 
and cannot be denied; cannot be denied even to the 
Deity. 

Is the planet subject to intelligent control? We 
know that it is: we ourselves can change the course 
of rivers for predestined ends, we can make highways, 
can unite oceans, can devise inventions, can make 
new compounds, can transmute species, can plan 
fresh variety of organic life ; we can create works of 
art; we can embody new ideas and lofty emotions in 
forms of language and music, and can leave them as 
Platonic offspring ^ to remote posterity. Our power 
is doubtless limited, but we can surely learn to do 
far more than we have yet so far in the infancy of 
humanity accomplished; more even than we have yet 
conjectured as within the range of possibility^. 

"^Symposium, 209. 



72 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

Our progress already has been considerable. It is 
but a moderate time since our greatest men were chip- 
ping flints and carving bones into the hkeness of 
reindeer. More recently they became able to build 
cathedrals and make poems. Now we are momenta- 
rily diverted from immortal pursuits by vivid interest 
in that kind of competition which has replaced the 
competition of the sword, and by those extraordinary 
inequahties of possession and privilege which have 
resulted from the invention of an indestructible and 
transmissible form of riches, a form over which 
neither moth nor rust has any power. We raise an 
increase of smoke, and offer sacrifices of squalor 
and ugliness, in worship of this new idol. But it will 
pass ; human life is not meant to continue as it is now 
in city slums ; nor is the strenuous futility of mere ac- 
cumulation hkely to satisfy people when once they 
have been really educated ; the world is beautiful, and 
may be far more widely happy than it has been yet. 
Those who have preached this hitherto have been 
heard with deaf ears, but some day we shall awake to 
a sense of our true planetary importance and shall 
recognise the higher possibilities of existence. Then 
shall we realise and practically believe what is in- 
volved in those words of poetic insight: 

The heaven, even the heavens are the Lord's: but the earth hath 
He given to the children of men. 

There is a vast truth in this yet to be discovered; 
power and influence and responsibility lie before us, 
appalling in their magnitude, and as yet we are but 



RELIGION, SCIENCE AND MIRACLE 73 

children playing on the stage before the curtain is 
rolled up for the drama in which we are to take part. 

But we are not left to our own devices : we of this 
living generation are not alone in the universe. What 
we call the individual is strengthened by elements 
emerging from the social whole out of which he is 
born. We are not things of yesterday, nor of to- 
morrow. We do not indeed remember our past, we 
are not aware of our future, but in common with 
everything else we must have had a past and must be 
going to have a future. Some day we may find our- 
selves able to realise both. 

Meanwhile, what has been our experience here? 
We have not been left solitary. Every newcomer to 
the planet, however helpless and strange he be, finds 
friends awaiting him, devoted and self-sacrificing 
friends, eager to care for and protect his infancy and 
to train him in the ways of this curious world. It is 
typical of what goes on throughout conscious exist- 
ence; the guidance which we exert, and to which we 
are subject now, is but a phase of something running 
through the universe. And when the time comes for 
us to quit this sphere and enter some larger field of 
action, I doubt not that we shall find there also that 
kindness and help and patience and love, without 
which no existence would be tolerable or even at some 
stages possible. 

Miracles he all around us : only they are not mirac- 
ulous. Special providences envelop us : only they are 
not special. Prayer is a means of communication as 
natural and as simple as is speech. 



74 SCIENCE AND FAITH 

Realise that you are part of a great orderly and 
mutually helpful cosmos, that you are not stranded 
or isolated in a foreign universe, but that you are part 
of it and closely akin to it ; and your sense of sympa- 
thy will be enlarged, your power of free communica- 
tion will be opened, and the heartfelt aspiration and 
communion and petition that we call prayer will come 
as easily and as naturally as converse with those 
human friends and relations whose visible bodily pres- 
ence gladdens and enriches your present life. 



SECTION II— CORPORATE WORSHIP, 

AND SERVICE 



CHAPTER IV 

THE ALLEGED INDIFFERENCE OF LAYMEN 
TO RELIGION 

THE average layman of the present day is often 
accused of being indifferent to religion. But 
the allegation as worded seems to me untrue, unless 
by "laymen" is understood the great mass of the peo- 
ple. Even then I doubt if they are indifferent to 
real rehgion, or to reaUty and sincerity and lofty- 
mindedness of any kind. No one can be really in- 
different to the great problem of existence — the mys- 
teries of life and death and of human destiny. It is 
doubtful whether people in general can be considered 
indifferent even to theology, of a sort, — ^not to prob- 
lems connected with apparent oppositions between 
knowledge and faith, for instance, nor to questions 
of Biblical interpretation and the nature of Inspira- 
tion. They are not unopen to the influence of a 
saintly life, or disposed to treat hghtly such funda- 
mental subjects as the existence of Deity and the rela- 
tions between man and God. 

I gather that they are not indifferent in this coun- 
try to these topics, because they seem always willing 
to read about them or to discuss them. And if this 
refers chiefly to the more educated classes, it may be 
maintained on behalf of the masses that their ap- 
parently perennial excitement about what doctrines 

77 



78 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

shall be taught to small children, though it may lack 
lucidity, seems to argue anything but indifference. 

In Germany and France, so far as I can judge, 
people in general do not care in the same way to dis- 
cuss religious questions, and theological magazines 
are confined to specialists ; there is little or nothing of 
general interest and wide circulation on the subject. 
In those countries minds seem^ closed, either in the 
positive or in the negative direction, as regards re- 
ligious beliefs. But here it is otherwise, and I have 
heard it maintained at a discussion society that there 
was really nothing except religion and politics which 
was worth the trouble of getting excited about. 

ISTevertheless there is a sense in which people in this 
country are indifferent to something allied to religion 
— at any rate to its outward and visible manifesta- 
tions. To Ecclesiasticism they are indifferent, and 
they do not in any great number go to church. I take 
the allegation which is here being dealt with to intend 
to ask the question. Why is this ? Why have the out- 
ward and visible forms of religion lost hold ^ of both 
educated and uneducated people? 

I believe that over-pressure is one answer — a gen- 
eral sense of the shortness of life and the immense 
amount there is to be done in it. This holds true 
whether the press of occupation is caused by the de- 
mands of pleasure, or of business, or of investigation, 

1 1 say "lost" hold, because I suppose I may assume, from the churches 
which they erected, as well as from the example of truly Roman Catholic 
countries at the present day, that, in say the twelfth century, observance 
of the outward forms of religion once really had a firm grasp of the 
majority of Englishmen. 



INDIFFERENCE OF LAYMEN TO RELIGION 79 

or of work for the public weal. In each case time is 
all too short for what can now be crowded into it. As 
soon as our faculties are well developed, and our in- 
fluence fairly active, it is almost time to begin to 
think of being called to service elsewhere, — ^there is 
no leisure to expend in unprofitable directions. 

Is going to church unprofitable, then? To some 
men often yes; to others, I suppose, always no: save 
in the sense that they have not profited by it. Perhaps 
to none is it quite unprofitable, but they may think it 
so. If it acted as a stimulus and an inspiration and a 
help to life, then surely people in general would not 
be so foolish as to be indifferent to it. But they may 
be mistaken; this is the age of strenuousness and high 
pressure, and it may be that a quiet two hours of 
peaceful meditation would be the very best sedative 
and rest-cure for many men whose activities are wear- 
ing them out. Some, and those the most strenuous 
of all, have found it so. Mr. Gladstone, for instance, 
was a studious attendant at public worship, and I 
should not be surprised to hear that the German Em- 
peror and President Roosevelt are so likewise; possi- 
bly in their case partly as an example, but also quite 
possibly as a private solace. 

One cannot but admire men, to whom every five 
minutes is of value, who thus give up large tracts of 
time to religious exercises ; and it is possible that many 
active men who ignore this help would be the better 
in every way if they too submitted themselves to the 
same discipline. It may be one of those cases where 
more haste is the less speed, and where the pubhc as- 



80 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

sembling of ourselves together in a reverent and wor- 
shipful spirit would be a real contribution to vitality 
and power. Under certain conditions I feel sure that 
it would be so, but is it so under present conditions? 
The answer must depend partly on individual tem- 
perament, partly on the form of "service" available. 

We must all be acquainted with the soothed and 
sympathetic feeling which is sometimes the result of 
attendance at a place of worship in company with 
others, even if nothing particular has been said worth 
carrying away : this is felt especially if the occasion is 
a symbolic one — a national thanksgiving, for instance, 
a demonstration of religious feeling by members of a 
scientific body, or other occasion of that kind; but if 
it is a mere everyday or weekly service, there must be 
some special harmony or congruity between the as- 
sembly and the words that have been said, or the 
ceremonies that have been performed, in order that 
the effect may be produced. 

There appear to be some ecclesiastically minded 
persons who can derive sustenance from what to 
others may seem extraordinarily commonplace, or 
even childish, proceedings. I have seen Mr. Glad- 
stone (the name of so great a man may be employed 
as illustration without impertinence) in an attitude 
of rapt and earnest attention, — ^not to the words of 
the Bible, which anyone might be glad to hear, nor 
to the words of the Prayer Book, which to those with 
a strongly-developed historic sense may carry with 
them a world of half- felt emotion — -but to the utter- 
ance from the pulpit of a very ordinary discourse. 



INDIFFERENCE OF LAYMEN TO RELIGION 81 

To most of us, however, this patient self -contribution 
to what is going on is denied; and the feehng with 
which some go away from an average place of wor- 
ship is too often a feeling of irritation and regret for 
wasted time. 

I have known men of energy supply the needed 
intellectual exercise, and contrive to stimulate their 
historic sense, by using a Latin Prayer Book and a 
Greek Testament ; and something of the sort is sorely 
needed if one is to attempt to keep one's attention 
fixed on the ancient formularies, so familiar from 
childhood, and recited or chanted in so meaningless a 
manner. 

The greater number of men, I believe, cultivate 
the habit of inattention during the greater part of 
the proceedings; and it is possible, though less easy, 
to preserve an attitude of mental inattention even 
when reciting formularies with the lips. To attend 
strenuously to the meaning of the clauses, in a creed, 
for instance, or even in the Lord's Prayer, is an eif ort. 
I do not believe it is often made. The words are 
slipped through, and if an idea is caught every now 
and again, that is all that can be expected. There 
was a time when this inattentive recital of the well- 
known and familiar could be tolerated ; and before the 
days of education it was probably useful. To some it 
may be useful still — ^to others it is tedious. The fact 
is, the conventional English Church Service, or eclec- 
tic admixture of combined services, is too long, and, 
as I think, too mechanical. The Psalter as a whole 
is oppressively tedious — I speak for myself; many 



82 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

of the chants one is weary of. The jewels would 
shine out more brightly if re-set. Some of the pray- 
ers are beautiful, or would be if they were properly 
read and were not spoiled by such frequent iteration. 
The little song at the end of each commandment is 
gorgeous when one hears it in the Elijah^ but it gets 
tiresome at the ninth repetition. The "Confession" 
is historically interesting and sometimes perhaps ap- 
propriate, but as a rule it is excessive and unreal ; and 
if ever true, it is not a thing one wishes to sing in 
public, nor indeed to sing at all, still less to pay a few 
illiterate boys and men to sing or monotone for one. 

The Te Deum^ on a national occasion, and sung 
slowly and emphatically, may be magnificent: as or- 
dinarily treated it is almost useless, and seems only 
inserted as a convenient break between the Lessons; 
save occasionally when the setting and singing are 
specially good, in which case it can be enjoyed as an 
oratorio is enjoyed. 

Some people may be able to utilise parts of the 
service which to others are tedious, and it may be con- 
tended that there is something for everybody; but 
for most people there must be long spells of dulness. 

Length, however, is not the only objection: rapid- 
ity, which is perhaps a consequence of length, is an- 
other. Constantly and rapidly repeated formularies 
must surely tend to become mechanical. We jeer at 
the Thibetan water-worked praying-wheel as a 
mechanical form of prayer; and yet I can imagine a 
peasant joyfully going on with his labour in the 
fields, in the consciousness that his prayer was being 



INDIFFERENCE OF LAYMEN TO RELIGION B3 

periodically turned up to heaven by the forces of 
nature, and his soul might send an aspiration after it, 
without interfering" with the industry of his body. I 
doubt if such a ritual is really more mechanical than 
some English services which I have attended. I know 
well that any Uturgy — ^the bleakest as well as the most 
ornate — can elevate the soul of the truly pious; but 
this minority cannot be included among the laity of 
whom indifference to religion is even alleged. 

As to the recital of a few incredible articles in 
the creeds, I say nothing: they are not numerous, and 
hardly act as a strong deterrent except to a few ear- 
nest souls; if there were reality about the procedure, 
some of the clauses would be repellent, but as it is, 
the so-called Athanasian hymn can be chanted 
through with the rest: it is an interesting glimpse 
into an ingenious mediaeval mind, to whom all the 
mystery of Divinity was expressible in words, with 
great positiveness of assurance, and with arithmetical 
precision of specification. But so far as the Creeds 
and the Articles contain things to which we and our 
teachers, the beneficed clergy, are expected to adhere, 
they may be to some extent deterrent; and it must be 
admitted that they require a good deal of explana- 
tion, and in manner of expression are rather out of 
date. 

With all the enthusiasm for religion in the world, 
I would say to professional Churchmen, you really 
cannot continue to expect people to wade continually 
through so much mediaeval and ecclesiastical lore. 
You must free the ship of official religion from in- 



84 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

crustation: it is water-logged and overburdened now, 
and its sails are patched and outworn. I do not ask 
you to use steam or any new-fangled mode of pro- 
pulsion. By all means keep your attachment to the 
past, but study reality and sincerity; strive to say 
what you really mean, and to say it in such way that 
others may know that you mean it, and may feel that 
they mean it too. The American Church has modi- 
fied some of the features characteristic of the Angli- 
can Liturgy; and its authorised Prayer Book contains 
interesting mijior variations; all of which are devised 
in the interests of elasticity and freedom, yet subject 
to a commendable spirit of conservatism. 

I trust that it is not an inseparable concomitant of 
a State religion that petitions should be tied and 
bound in rigid forms, that no audible prayer can be 
uttered except what is printed and authorised; it is 
pitiful when the only initiation permitted, even at 
times of stress, lies in the emphasis which may be 
thrown upon certain words, and the pauses that may 
be made after them. But at least the sermon is free. 
So let preachers realise their opportunities and make 
use of them, and let them no longer throw away their 
chance of moving the hearts of men towards a higher 
and more useful and unselfish life, by over-attention 
to the conventional arrangement called the Church's 
Year. The annual commemoration of everything is 
often made an excuse for laziness: it saves the trou- 
ble of choosing a subject. It provides a hackneyed 
theme ready to hand, to be treated in a conventional 



INDIFFERENCE OF LAYMEN TO RELIGION 85 

and hackneyed manner. Silently and patiently the 
people sit there, and are not fed. 

Rehgion is one thing; Church services as often 
conducted are quite another thing. Modification 
will be resented and opposed by some singularly 
minded lay Churchmen ; nevertheless, if more eminent 
ability is to be attracted to the service of the Church, 
if the great body of the laity are to be reached in any 
serious and effective manner, modifications, excisions, 
and reforms are necessary. It is not religion to which 
people are indifferent. 



CHAPTER V 
UNION AND BREADTH 

A Plea for Essential Unity Amid Formal Dif- 
ference IN A National Church 

"The true tragedy is a conflict of right with right, not of right with 
wrong." — Hegel. 

ISOOlSr became aware that my little book called 
TJie Substance of Faith could hardly be re- 
garded as an eirenicon in respect of the present Eng- 
lish Education controversy, though I began it some- 
what with that hope, and still think that it should be 
of some assistance in that direction ; for it is apparent 
that the dispute between Church and Dissent is not 
only of long standing historically, but is intrinsically 
deepseated. It would be worth a considerable effort 
if the inflampfation due to that chronic sore could be 
reduced; bux the cure should be attempted, not by 
blinking or denying the reality of the differences, but 
rather by facing them resolutely and understanding 
their nature and origin before seeking to prescribe a 
remedy. 

The dispute which is most alive to-day between 
State Church and Free Churches is not exactly re- 
ligious : it seems to be rather ethnological or anthropo- 
logical. That is to say, it may be held to represent a 
difference inherent in the varied nature of humanity. 



UNION AND BREADTH 87 

and to correspond to the divergent views taken of re- 
ligion by two different types of mind. If there is 
any truth in this statement, it ought surely to be pos- 
sible to recognise the fact, and to adjust our arrange- 
ments to it, as to any other of the facts of nature. 

It must have been frequently pointed out before 
— but sometimes statements bear and need repetition 
— ^that there are two chief religious types: one type 
valuing ceremony and artistic accessories and human 
organisation and intervention; while the other, 
thinking itself competent to dispense with what it 
may consider adventitious aids, seeks to worship, 
neither in temple nor even in mountain, but directly 
in spirit and in truth. This one thinks that the Holy 
Spirit is equally accessible to every individual. That 
one conceives that a Special Power is miraculously 
transmitted by ceremonial means, namely, by the im- 
position of hands. 

Those who take this which may be called the Apos- 
tolic view, necessarily exalt the Church, which to them 
is God's vicegerent upon earth ; for its priests possess 
a power denied not only to laymen but to ministers 
of all other denominations, who in this essential re- 
spect are and must be regarded as laymen. It is true 
that the branches of the Catholic and Apostolic 
Church do not agree among themselves entirely as to 
the authentic channels of this mysterious influence. 
To the Roman, the Anglican Catholic is a layman, 
even though he be a prelate."^ To the Anglican, the 

iThe question of the recognition or non-recognition of Anglican Or- 



88 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

President of the Wesleyan Conference, or the Mod- 
erator of the Presbyterian Synod, may be in friend- 
ship a brother, and in good works a helper, but he has 
no claim to recognition as a priest: nor, indeed, does 
he prefer such a claim, because he does not belong to 
the type which appreciates the idea of Divine influ- 
ence ceremonially conveyed from one human being 
to another. 

But the distinction of type is not confined to the 
clergy : it runs through the laity likewise. Those who 
believe in the special and exclusive character of eccle- 
siastical priesthood are bound to venerate the Officers 
invested with those powers, and to submit to their 
teaching and influence, irrespective of their person- 
ality; for they can not only help and strengthen you 
by administration of the Sacraments: they actually 
have the power of forgiving your sins, — or, still more 
remarkable, of preventing the forgiveness of your 
sins, if they be so minded. 

Baptismal regeneration is only one of the things 
which can be eff*ected through their agency, but that 
too is a power of great magnitude, and if your child 
is to be eternally lost without their aid their aid must 
be sought ; for in this ceremony he is made, according 
to the Catechism — not recognised only and admitted 
into the Church as such, but actually made — a child 
of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of Heaven.^ 

ders is sometimes said to have been decided like a move in a game or 
in party politics — after private discussion as to which course was best 
calculated to benefit one side and to damage the other. The subject ap- 
pears to be eminently fitted for such treatment. 
iThe preposition "in" is used in the Catechism, but "by" occurs in 



UNION AND BREADTH 89 

True, they must be regarded only as instruments 
and vehicles of Divine mercy ; but in so far as Divine 
mercy is felt to be a vital thing, the channels by which 
it is dispensed become of overwhelming interest ; and 
if they, as Officers of a corporate and divinely or- 
dained Church, really have in any sense a monopoly 
of the Holy Spirit, their unfolding of the Bible may 
be the only explication religiously permissible. 

It is only those who have no belief in the reality of 
priestly powers of this kind — ^people to whom such 
powers seem like superstition, who prefer to worry 
out truth for themselves, and who pray directly to the 
Fountain of Infinite Wisdom to keep them from 
being deceived and to lead them into the way of truth 
— ^it is only these who can afford to dispense with, or 
in some cases even to resent, the good offices of the 
Cathohc Church, whether in its Greek or Roman or 
AngHcan branches. 

If now we bethink ourselves what is it that con- 
stitutes the essential difference of type, I think we 
shall find that we must admit as the most distinctive 
feature of the Prayer Book, from the denominational 
and ultra-protestant point of view, not the ordinary 
popular services of Matins and Evensong, nor the 
still more beautiful form for Holy Communion, but 
the regulation for the Ordering of Priests. The 
greater part of that service may be passed as unde- 
nominational, save that naturally it seems intended 
expressly to sever the AngHcan from the Roman 

one form of the baptismal service: "Seeing now . . , that this child 
is by baptism regenerate." 



90 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

priesthood, but the official sentence which accompanies 
the laying on of hands is distinctly and purposely 
hierarchical. Those who accept that are Churchmen; 
those who rejoice at it are high- Churchmen. All 
other details sink into insignificance before this Epis- 
copal pronouncement; 

*'Keceive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of 
a priest in the Church of God, now committed unto 
thee by the Imposition of our hands. Whose sins 
thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins 
thou dost retain, they are retained." 

This has been said ceremonially to every Anglican 
parish priest in the British Isles, some of whom doubt- 
less believe that a mysterious efficacy has descended 
upon them, and that they possess the awful power 
thus conferred. 

That being so, it should be, and probably is, clear 
to any contending and opposing party that priests 
so consecrated, and animated by such beHef s, cannot 
possibly consent to open their schools to dissenters: 
it would be more reasonable for doctors to open the 
hospitals to quacks. They are bound to insist on 
their high prerogative, and to teach children to come 
to them for the sacramental and other inspired influ- 
ences which they can bestow on the penitent and the 
faithful, or be false to their trust.^ And conversely, 

1 "Experience has shown the inefficacy of the mere injunctions of 
Church order, however scripturally enforced, in restraining from schism 
the awakened and anxious sinner; who goes to a dissenting preacher 
'because (as he expresses it) he gets good from him': and though he 
does not stand excused in God's sight for yielding to the temptation, 
surely the ministers of the Church are not blameless if, by keeping bacli: 



UNION AND BREADTH 91 

those who stoutly deny and conscientiously resent the 
idea of any such special privileges — ^who quote in op- 
position, for instance, 1 Cor. i. 17 — ^may feel bound 
to express their views also, and may earnestly seek to 
prevent their children from coming under avowedly 
sacerdotal influence. The text or texts in the Bible 
on which an absolution dogma is based must be held 
responsible for a good deal of the perennial conflict 
between Church and Dissent. It may be possible for 
Bibhcal critics to say that John xx. 21-23 is a later 
insertion, hke Matt. xvi. 19 and the end of Mark; 
but assuming the most orthodox possible view, and 
taking the record of the words about the forgiveness 
and the retention of sins as exact, it is open even to 
devout Bibliolators to argue against the modern use 
of such a formula, somewhat as follows: "By whom," 
they might ask, "were these words spoken to the dis- 
ciples? Not by Jesus of Nazareth in the flesh, but 
by the risen Lord just before His Ascension and Ses- 
sion at the right hand of God. That which He could 
say then, to those whom He was leaving comfortless 
for the ten days between His departure and the feast 
of Pentecost, is now said by every bishop of the 
Church. But it does not follow that what could be 
said once, under exceptional circumstances, is suitable 

the more gracious and consoling truths provided for the little ones of 
Christ, they indirectly lead him into it. Had he been taught as a child, 
that the Sacraments, not preaching, are the sources of Divine Grace; 
that the Apostolical ministry had a virtue in it which went out over the 
whole Church, when sought by the prayer of faith; that fellowship with 
it was a gift and privilege, as well as a duty, we could not have had 
so many wanderers from our fold, nor so many cold hearts within if* 
(Advt to Tracts for the Times, 1834). 



92 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

for indefinite repetition." Thus might opponents 
contend, and their contention might have to be admit- 
ted as true, and the modern use of the formula vir- 
tually explained away, save by a few extremists who 
still adhere to its literal interpretation. 

Hence there is a well-marked cause of difference, 
and justification of a militant attitude. How then 
can it be hoped to effect formal reconcihation of the 
two religious types ? At first sight, only in one of two 
ways : either by general admission of truth in a sacer- 
dotal of this kind; or, on the other hand, by the 
equally improbable admission of the imaginary char- 
acter of any sort of basis for such a claim — sl percep- 
tion that, though it has survived the shocks of time, 
and come down the centuries to our own day, it is yet 
a human imagination, and essentially false. 

Taken in its hteral and bald signification, the ordi- 
nation sentence above quoted would be intolerable to 
a low or to a broad Churchman ; consequently he must 
be able to interpret it otherwise. He would doubt- 
less claim that it signifies the right to declare the judg- 
ment of the Christian conscience, or at any rate of the 
Christian Church, as to details of right and wrong: 
to formulate, in fact, the judgments of the Holy 
Spirit, under whose guidance he is henceforth to act. 
Securus judical orbis terrarum. It is not, however, 
a barren formula removed from practice: it enters 
into the pastoral work of the priest, and is applied to 
sick persons in the following form: 

"By his authority committed to me, I absolve thee 
from all thy sins. In the name," etc. 



UNION AND BREADTH 93 

Even this, however though challenged by John 
Henry Ne^^man, and regarded by him as inadmissi- 
ble save under the Roman asgis, is doubtless capable 
of refined interpretation. And so it is with all the 
formularies — else it were impossible for great and 
good men, to w^hom the natural sense of some of them 
must be repugnant to hold office in the Church to-day. 
Let it be admitted, once for all, that saving and min- 
imising interpretations are known and utilised by 
many of those inside the pale; and I shall assume, 
without question now, that they are justified in these 
interpretations under the circumstances. But those 
outside the pale, and those who are hesitating to en- 
ter it, are liable to take these formulae more nearly at 
their face-value, and to mistrust ingenuity of inter- 
pretation. Wherefore — and that is my point — such 
formulae act as obstacles, as weapons of exclusion, and 
as causes of dissension and bitterness; even among 
those who in all essentials agree. And they have 
another function, perhaps equally harmful: they en- 
courage extreme sacerdotal pretensions in a few ex- 
ceptionally constituted persons, who, whatever may be 
their saintly character, are in disaccord with the reli- 
gious ideals of the nation. So much so, indeed, that 
they might find their proper place in another and a 
foreign communion. 

Seeing, therefore, that such formulae may do harm, 
it is open to question whether they do a compensating 
amount of good. Words, such as those above quoted, 
either mean something definite, or they do not. If 
they confer any real power, if they give real strength 



94 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

to the Church, they must be retained ; but if they serve 
no useful purpose, if they signify only what is nat- 
urally to be expected without them — ^namely, the 
power of appreciating and fostering the good, of de- 
tecting and condemning the bad, which is possessed 
by every decent man — if they are only a difficulty to 
be boggled at and explained away, they constitute a 
weakness, not a strength, and it may be well to have 
them changed. 

In any case it is quite absurd for either side in the 
controversy — the ancient controversy between Catho- 
lic and Protestant, between Priest and Presbyter, be- 
tween High Anglican and Free Churchman, between 
upholders of public ritual and insisters on private con- 
science, between the objective and the subjective 
types of worshippers, between those who lay stress on 
the Brotherhood and those who emphasise the indi- 
vidual life — it is futile for either side to pretend that 
the other side is wicked and schismatic and alienated 
from God. So perhaps there is a third course — ^what 
some think the fatal course of compromise — ^in which 
the permanent vitaKty of the two types of religious 
humanity is recognised, and something of absolute 
truth admitted to be visible from both points of view. 
In which case it might not be too much to hope that 
the two groups, no longer hostile, could ultimately 
agree to live together in harmony, as two wings of an 
enlarged National Church; without need for anyone 
to abandon the phase of truth, or the form of worship 
which especially appeals to his disposition and theo- 
logical understanding. At present there are Non- 



UNION AND BREADTH 95 

conformists, obedient to private judgment and dis- 
obedient to authority, at both ends of the Church of 
England: — ^those who left it when what they con- 
sidered too much superstition was enforced; and those 
who, without leaving it, feel conscientiously impelled 
to ignore both lay jurisdiction and episcopal "admoni- 
tion" when too Httle superstition is ordered; — ^mean- 
ing by "superstition," in this connexion, the outcome 
in practice of over-belief. 

I do not venture to suggest inclusion in a National 
Church of those who take a non-national view of their 
civil obHgations. No question of union or of adap- 
tation can be entertained by those who regard a for- 
eign Potentate and foreign Conclave as supreme au- 
thority and fount of inspiration : nothing short of sub- 
mission and conversion would be acceptable to them. 
Nor is it possible for them to join a merely national 
Church, however nearly their creed may approach one 
section of it on the purely religious side: a certain 
canon — which I presume is still in force — to wit, that 
subjects of a temporal ruler disapproved by the 
Church may be relieved of their allegiance, and that 
the promulgation of unacceptable doctrine is to be 
suppressed with a high hand — constitutes a sufficient 
obstacle.^ It is far from desirable that any ecclesias- 

1 The Lateran Council decree, above referred to, part of the Roman 
Canon Law, is guarded against in the English Church by the oath of 
the King's sovereignty administered to deacons, which runs as foUows: — 
"I A. B, do swear, that I do from my heart abhor, detest, and abjure, 
as impious and heretical, that damnable Doctrine and Position, That 
Princes excommunicated or deprived by the Pope, or any Authority of 
the See of Rome, may be deposed or murdered by their Subjects, or 
any other whatsoever. And I do declare, that no foreign Prince, Person, 



96 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

tical gauntlet which investigators of truth may have 
to run should in the smallest degree be backed up by 
the power of the State. But no such difficulty arises 
when contemplating a reincorporation of the Free 
Churches which have grown up and divaricated in 
consequence of a long spell of intolerant bigotry end- 
ing in an act of disruption in and about the year 1662. 
Many of them could easily rejoin one pole of a Na- 
tional Church if it sought to attract them; at any rate 
they need not be repelled by enforced uniformity in 
detail, nor by any kind of secular legislation. The 
Legislature conspicuously shrinks from interference 
with liberty of conscience and must recognise that 
it made mistakes in the past whenever it con- 
sented to be coaxed or coerced into narrowness 
and brutality in matters of faith. It would surely 
welcome a movement in favor of breadth and reinte- 
gration, if it were mooted by those most concerned. 
There is the more hope for some such solution, in- 
asmuch as none but a bigot could claim to grasp in 

Prelate, State, or Potentate, hath, or ought to hav^ any Jurisdiction, 
Power, Superiority, Pre-eminence, or Authority, Ecclesiastical or Spir- 
itual, within this Realm. So help me God." 

This is the wording of the decree: "Let the secular powers, what- 
ever offices they may exercise . . . exterminate from the territories 
under their jurisdiction heretics of all kinds marked out by the Church. 
. . . But if any temporal ruler, being required and admonished by 
the Church, shall neglect to purge his land from this heretical filth, 
let him be bound in the chain of excommunication by the metropolitan 
and other bishops of the province. And if he shall disdain to make 
satisfaction within a year, let this be signified to the Supreme Pontifi', 
that he may declare the vassals of that ruler henceforth released from 
their allegiance, and may ofi'er the land to occupation by Catholics, who, 
having exterminated the heretics, may possess it in peace and preserve 
it steadfast in the Faith." 



UNION AND BREADTH • 97 

his own person the whole truth concerning a subject 
of infinite magnitude, or could suppose that the 
precise form of worship most suited to himself must 
necessarily be dominant throughout the cosmos. 
Wherefore it might be recognised, by reasonable per- 
sons on either side, that the manifest enthusiasm and 
religious fervour of those from whom they differ are 
roused, not by falsehood and error, but by real por- 
tions, even though they be fragmentary portions, of 
Divine truth which have hitherto escaped their own 
ken, or for which their own emotional and aesthetic 
nature happens to be unfitted. 

The possibihty of such a concordat may at first 
sight seem remote, but it is worth more than momen- 
tary consideration, and it is possible to detect more 
reasonableness embedded in the proposal than appears 
on the surface. 

First of all, then, let us ask is it true that any 
worshipper, however spiritually minded, can dispense 
altogether with material facts as an aid to the ex- 
pression and realisation of spiritual truth, and as an 
external stimulus to the attitude of worship? Can 
the spiritual and the material, in fact, be entirely and 
utterly discriminated and separated? I will not ask 
whether such separation is or is not desirable; I will 
not point out how much loss would be sustained if it 
were practicable — ^how fatal to half of nature such an 
achievement would inmiediately be ; but I will simply 
ask, is it ever done, as a fact? I believe that a little 
consideration will show that it is never really accom- 



98 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

plished, and that some material agent is active even 
in the most refined and spiritual perceptions. It will 
at least be admitted that in the case of some religiously 
minded persons the sights and sounds of nature 
awaken a sense of Divine presence. In others the 
same feelings are aroused by hearing of some human 
action, or by meeting other human beings with whom 
they are in sympathy. Some men are carried God- 
ward by beauty, others by truth, others by goodness ; 
and some even by the commonplace actions of daily 
life. A remarkable face, casually encountered, or a 
word even from a stranger, has been known occasion- 
ally to call up thoughts akin to worship, even in the 
most unritualistic follower of George Fox. 

"Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch, 
A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, 
A chorus-ending from Euripides, — 
And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears 
As old and new at once as nature's self. 
To rap and knock and enter in our soul." 

If there be any truth in the suggestion — and it is a 
question which must be answered by each for himself, 
it can hardly be put in a form that will equally apply 
to every individual — ^then an essential feature of the 
sacramental efficacy of material or external things, 
when spiritually regarded and transfigured in the 
light of a dominating faith, is admitted: for material 
means whereby the soul can be elevated, and brought 
into conscious relation with Deity, are essentially of 
the nature of sacraments. 

"To attempt to grasp the infinite by reason," says 
Plotinus, "is futile; it can only be known in immedi- 



UNION AND BREADTH 99 

ate presence. The faculty by which the mind divests 
itself of its personality is Ectasy, In ectasy the soul 
becomes loosed from its material prison, separated 
from individual consciousness, and becomes absorbed 
in the Infinite Intelligence from which it emanated." 
This condition of inspiration, direct intuition, or en- 
thusiasm, — some approach to what is meant by "see- 
ing God," — is but transitory, and may be rare, but it 
can be induced by a great variety of instrument. A 
few attain it during the contemplation of law and 
order enslirined in a mathematical expression, or in 
some comprehensive philosophic formula ; but to many 
the transfiguring and revealing experience is her- 
alded by the song of birds, by sunshine upon grass, 
by the wind in tree-tops, or by the wild solitude of 
mountains. To one the vision comes during the 
music of an orchestra or the sight of a great work of 
art ; to another, the atmosphere of an empty cathedral 
is full of it; while to another, again, the same cathe- 
dral must contain Hghts and incense in order effec- 
tively to act as a medium. To many the acts of 
common worship are an invaluable aid; while others 
find their fullest help towards realising the Divine 
presence in the consecrated materials of a purposely 
arranged and specially organised Sacrament. 

The means of grace last mentioned — ^being con- 
sciously directed to a desired end — ^must be considered 
as especially forcible and effective; at any rate for 
those who are constituted in such a way as to appreci- 
ate accessories and aids of this kind. But it is not to 
be denied that, in spite of good intention, these eccle- 



100 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

siastical forms and ceremonies strike another type of 
religious disposition as so humanly ingenious and spe- 
cifically organised as to repel rather than attract di- 
vine thoughts; which with these people arise in more 
spontaneous fashion, amid the simplicity of almost 
unassisted worship in plain buildings, or among the 
solitudes of unconsecrated nature. 

It must be admitted however, — and I presume that 
Nonconformists would be the last to deny it, — that 
there is always a danger lest, if human effort and or- 
ganisation be altogether discarded, as they sometimes 
are by religiously minded secularists, the opportunities 
for spontaneous excitation of religious thoughts may 
seldom or never occur ; and so gradually the power of 
entertaining lofty ideas may become atrophied by 
lack of use. Moreover, those who depend entirely on 
the capacities of their own unaided individual soul 
may find, in times of stress, a sad emptiness and 
dearth of comfort there. That is at once the weak- 
ness and strength of an emphatically spiritual re- 
ligion: it makes a severe demand on the worshippers' 
own powers and faculties. This constitutes a weak- 
ness, — for there come times when the spirit is so 
harassed by the troubles and trials of existence that 
even the stoutest cannot stand the strain; but it con- 
stitutes also a strength, — inasmuch as it braces and 
exercises and develops the fibres of the character. 

There will also be those who are impressed with, not 
so much the right as the duty of private judgment; 
and on the other hand there will always be those who 
willingly submit to authority. In the same way we 



UNION AND BREADTH 101 

must recognise a constitutional difference, a differ- 
ence of temperament, a difference of response to di- 
verse appeals. But the difference is only dependent 
on "accident" or appropriateness of vehicle: it is not 
a difference of really fundamental character; and 
though it is natural to prefer one form of material 
accessory to another, it is not human, at least it is not 
religious, to despise and reject them all. 

It is perhaps not known to everybody that the 
general nature of a sacrament is recognised by the 
EngHsh Church — very likely by the Roman Church 
too, — for it is definitely laid down in the "Homilies" 
that in a certain sense there may be many sacraments ; 

"Therefore neither it, nor any other sacrament else, 
be such sacraments as Baptism and Communion are; 
but in a general acception the name of a sacrament 
may be attributed to anything whereby an holy thing 
is signified" {Homily on Common Prayer and Sac- 
raments) . 

Wherefore, opponents may ask, why not then carry 
out this doctrine into practice? why urge the impor- 
tance of two, or of seven? 

One orthodox answer is that the two are "necessary 
to salvation," — a doctrine corresponding with the 
over-hteral misreading of a text, and niot really be- 
lieved any more than the corresponding "Athana- 
sian" clauses are believed. But a better answer, and 
indeed the answer of Christendom generally with few 
exceptions, is that the two were in a special sense 
authorised and enjoined by Christ; so in order to es- 
timate their crucial character it is instructive to con- 



102 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

sider how these specially Christian sacraments arose. 
It is easy to add an element of mysticism to the bare 
facts, and those who make this addition may claim it 
as a sign of spiritual growth; but the addition should 
be voluntary, it cannot wisely be imposed by legisla- 
tion. The bare facts themselves may be legitimately 
and inoffensively regarded somewhat thus: 

Jesus found the old baptismal act of ceremonial 
washing revived and used as a sign of repentance by 
his great precursor, — either as a symbohc cleansing, 
or else as a symbolic burying to sin and new birth to 
righteousness (for both significations can be attached 
to the rite of iromersion) ; instinctively he recognised 
the advantage of associating divine thoughts with so 
common an act as bathing or washing, and, just as he 
utilised any common event for doctrinal purposes, so 
he utilised this act, by submitting himself to it : there- 
by canonising it among Christians for all time. But 
then he did the same thing virtually with the sower 
and the seed, with a marriage feast, with fisherman's 
nets, with carpenters' tools, and a multitude of com- 
mon incidents of life; though in these the Church, 
perhaps fortunately, has been slower to follow him to 
the full extent. I say fortunately, because it is so apt 
to let its enthusiasm carry it unwisely far : in the case 
of baptism it has at certain periods of its history, at 
any rate in some of its branches, gone too far, and 
converted a ceremony of admission into a miraculous 
rite of saving efficacy. 

In another case also it has not only followed, but 
has emphatically gone beyond and exceeded, its in- 



UNION AND BREADTH 103 

structions, to what many think a lamentahle extent ; at 
times even daring to inflict torture and death on those 
who could not travel with it along this humanly ex- 
tended road. For the common act of eating and 
drinking was among those conspicuously sanctified by 
Christ; on that pathetic occasion when, after long 
discourse on his approaching fate, and much figura- 
tive speech concerning the necessity for complete 
union with himself, he took up the bread and the wine, 
no doubt blessing them after the still extant Jewish 
fashion, and then — perhaps half thinking of ancient 
pagan rites, wherein exuberant gentile worshippers 
had spoken of eating the flesh of a god, and certainly 
remembering the sacrifices of flesh and blood f amihar 
in their own scriptures and in the forthcoming pass- 
over — added, in a moment of enthusiasm fraught with 
strange destiny for the future Church, "This is my 
flesh and this is my blood. Bless it, and take it, and 
remember me whenever henceforth ye feed together." 
As for himself, this was his last food and his last 
drink — a long spasm of torture and hunger and thirst 
was all that lay before him on earth — "I shall taste 
no more of the fruit of the vine till I drink it new with 
you in the Kingdom of my Father." 

Regarded simply and naturally, it is a gracious 
domestic ceremony ; akin to the toast of good fellow- 
ship, but with the sadness of pain and parting com- 
mingled. It was surely intended as an act of union 
and brotherhood, not as a testing instrument or divid- 
ing engine. The sharing of one loaf is recognised 
by St. Paul (1 Cor. x. 17) as a symbol of the oneness 



104 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

of the many in the Christian body — a true com- 
munion. 

Looked at from the point of view of subsequent 
history, and what human organisation has made of it, 
even devout worshippers must admit that superstition 
has been prone to enter, and that its ecclesiastical de- 
velopments have been at times painful beyond de- 
scription. 

Yet that should not prevent those who prefer not 
to partake of ecclesiastically administered sacrament 
from recognising that to others it constitutes the very 
bread of life, and that to worshippers of this character 
the meaning and efficacy of the symbols are en- 
hanced beyond measure by ceremonial observance 
and ritual. 

What has been said about sacraments can be in- 
terpreted as applying to priesthood also. A priest is 
a vehicle of the Holy Ghost, an interpreter of divine 
things, and a helper towards higher life. Priesthood 
is a reality ; but, if my interpretation of it be correct, 
it cannot be a professional monopoly. Like genius, 
it evades definition; but is it not likely to be coercible 
and transmissible by ceremonial means. Surely it 
must be true that the Spirit moveth where it Hsteth, 
and is not amenable to clerical control. 

Every man, woman, or child who has the power of 
elevating the thought of another human being, every- 
one who is chosen to act as a channel of the Divine 
Spirit, is for the time a priest. It may be well to set 
aside and train and guard a band of persons who feel 



UNION AND BREADTH 105 

specially called to this high office ; in the hope that by 
discipline and custom their powers of true priesthood 
and sainthood may increase. It is desirable that the 
Church should set store by and guard its priests, just 
as it guards its sacraments, from pollution and con- 
tamination with the things of the outer world. Pre- 
cautionary and reverential arrangements are humanly 
intelligible and more or less necessary, but they are 
not essential ; they are matters of ecclesiastical polity, 
not of divine ordinance. 

The Church recognises, indeed, that every man is in 
some small sense a priest in his own household, and 
admits that in times of emergency he may act as such, 
up to the point of administering the minor sacrament 
of Baptism, provided he employs the right material 
and the authorised form of words; but, save for this 
charitable exception, it jealously guards its own 
rites and privileges, and denies the real apostolic 
authority to all save those whom it has itself 
ordained: thereby and to that extent appearing to 
claim a monopoly of the Holy Spirit, which, in the 
judgment of many, it cannot rigorously sustain, ex- 
cept in so far as it may be justified by public conven- 
ience and usage. 

So long as specific and special priesthood is recog- 
nised as possessed only in a representative capacity, it 
can do no harm. Harm begins when an exclusive 
character is claimed for it. The true official priest is 
representative or typical of the potential priesthood 
of all religious humanity, a symbol of the close con- 
nection and affectionate intercourse between God and 



106 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

man: somewhat as Christ was essentially the son of 
man and son of God, to the exclusion of none of his 
brethren. 

In this form the office is not to be stigmatised as 
sacerdotal — it is only to be so stigmatised when it 
claims to be exclusive, when it seeks to be a monopoly 
of the grace of God. 

So also the Eucharist may legitimately be held to 
represent or typify a Divine Presence, provided it is 
likewise taught that all nature is the living garment of 
God, and that space and time are expressions of His 
thoughts. It is not a claim for the Divine presence, 
but a claim for the Divine absence — anywhere — that 
should be resisted. 

There is no need for nonconformist feeling in these 
matters, except in details of administration which may 
well be made more elastic. Priesthood and sacra- 
ments are reaUties ; forms and orderly ceremonies are 
necessary for collective human worship : it is their ex- 
aggeration and misunderstanding that is to be depre- 
cated, not the things themselves. Those who think 
they are worshipping in spirit only, are really using 
forms and material aids, though the forms may be of 
a simple character. An attitude of body, an enforced 
silence, a gathering together into an accustomed build- 
ing, the reading of a book, the singing of a hymn — 
all these are physical and material aids to spiritual 
growth, and are therefore essentially sacramental. 
It is but a question of degree; and those who cannot 
utilise forms of so simple a character are justified in 



UNION AND BREADTH 107, 

seeking to invent and enjoy ceremonies of a more 
elaborate kind. 

So also, everyone privileged to act as a minister 
of God, a true vehicle of the Holy Spirit, is for the 
time being a priest by right divine. It is only because 
under present conditions such influence is compara- 
tively rare, that we have to betake ourselves to a pro- 
fessional priesthood. It is a necessity: it is not an 
ideal. The ideal held out by Christ himself was a 
high one. "Be ye perfect," he said. Be a Christ, 
he might have said: be thyself a messenger and re- 
vealer of divine truth, up to the measure of thy ca- 
pacity. "Receive ye the Holy Spirit." He did not 
say these things to the priest and orthodox worship- 
pers of his own day — ^to them he said quite other 
things : — ^these high injunctions he laid upon a body of 
trained and chosen peasants who had loved and fol- 
lowed him, and thus ordained them with genuine 
priesthood. 

And to all the animate and inanimate creatures, of 
earth and air and sea, he gave a message too. On 
all of them he conferred sacramental efficacy — noth- 
ing is unholy or unclean — everything can join in the 
song of joy and worship that rises from all healthy 
nature. By his teaching the whole world of matter 
is transfigured and glorified before our eyes ; it is suf- 
fused with immanent Deity, and has become, for 
those with eyes to see, a mirror of the Almighty. 

Now all this, which to most of us is so clear now, 



108 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

was not equally clear to the generality of folk in the 
times gone by. Saints here and there seized the truth, 
no doubt, and tried to express it in language fitted to 
their time; but from the great mass of the people it 
was hidden. Persons in high office — Archbishop 
Cranmer and others — put together our liturgy, 
during a moderately exalted period of English his- 
tory, utilising many beautiful petitions and formu- 
laries, and showing great genius for the work; but it 
is not to be supposed that they were gifted with infal- 
libility, so that they grasped the truth completely and 
expressed it for all time. Nor was the Act of Parlia- 
ment which crystallised and congealed the Prayer 
Book an inspired document.^ Admitting that his- 
toric forms make a special appeal to the emotions, 
revision of the Prayer Book on the intellectual 
side ought to be and is necessary, especially after a 
century of great intellectual achievement. The ques- 
tion arises whether the time is not ripe for revision 
now. 

Loth as I am to meddle with professional and ec- 
clesiastical matters, the present juncture in the history 
of the English Church and nation seems to me suffi- 
ciently important to compel those who recognise the 
pressing need for social reform, and the great power 
and influence for good which a truly efficient Church 
would possess, to urge a reconsideration of the im- 
plicit tests and requirements imposed on candidates 

1 Even Newman, in a tract urging no concession or tittle of alter- 
ation, says: "I confess that there are few parts of the Service that I 
could not disturb myself about and feel fastidious at, if I allowed my 
mind in this abuse of reason." 



UNION AND BREADTH 109 

for Holy Orders in the Church of England at various 
stages in their career. — The fact that it is a National 
Church removes the charge of impertinence from the 
utterance of a layman on such matters. The spirit of 
the following sentences, taken from "His Majesty's 
Declaration" printed in every Anglican Prayer 
Book, is not attractive to an age which has imbibed 
the idea of evolution and some conception of the faith- 
ful investigation of truth: 

. . . "the settled Continuance of the Doctrine and 
Disciple of the Church of England now established; 
from which We will not endure any varying or de- 
parting in the least Degree. . . . We will, that all 
further curious search be laid aside. . • . And that 
no man hereafter shall either print, or preach, to 
draw the Article aside any way, but shall submit to it 
in the plain and full meaning thereof: and shall not 
put his own sense or comment to be the meaning 
of the Article, but shall take it in the literal and 
grammatical sense. 

"That if any publick Reader in either of Our Uni- 
versities, or any Head or Master of a College, or any 
other person respectively in either of them, shall affix 
any new sense to any Article, or shall publickly read, 
determine, or hold any publick Disputation, or suf- 
fer any such to be held either way, in either the Uni- 
versities or Colleges respectively; or if any Divine 
in the Universities shall preach or print any thing 
either way, other than is already established in Con- 
vocation with Our Royal Assent; he, or they, the Of- 
fenders, shall be liable to Our displeasure, and the 



110 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

Church's censure in our Commission Ecclesiastical, 
as well as any other: And We will see there shall be 
due Execution upon them." 

If the Church excludes, and to some extent even 
if it only threatens to exclude, from its ministry all 
young men who are unable to accept a system of 
archaic formulse as valid, with whatever saving 
clauses and subterfuges it dilutes in practice its 
theoretical requirements, it may be creating for itself 
an "unnatural selection," so to speak, a survival or 
selection of the weakest. And if it does so, then, like 
any other organism in the same case, it must in the 
long run infallibly degenerate. 

I believe that its leaders, its real leaders, admit that 
it could with advantage amend its procedure in sev- 
eral particulars; especially that it could diminish the 
amount of mechanical uniformity and allow some 
elasticity in the use of a liturgy which, though fra- 
grant with historical aroma, has now become to many 
people monotonous and barren. But the chief wish 
of those who love the idea of a ISTational Church is 
that it would so modify its entrance barriers, and so 
simplify its formularies, as to draw to itself more 
young men of character, intellect, and breadth of 
viev/. 

Only so can it once more become, what it ought to 
be and is not, a truly comprehensive National Church, 
— one flock under one Shepherd, — elevating and 
sanctifying the State by connexion with it ; instead of, 
what many now consider it, an unholy alliance of 
mingled constraint and privilege, — hampered in its 



UNION AND BREADTH 111 

own actions by the rigidity of its connexion with 
Parliament, and yet drawing thence so much worldly 
dignity and social independence as to be regarded 
with suspicion by an able and energetic portion of a 
religiously minded nation, whose ministers are ex- 
cluded from co-operation in the National ceremonies 
and from official recognition by the State, and who 
consequently conduct their ministrations at a percep- 
tible disadvantage : a disadvantage which to Newman 
seemed so serious that he wrote, in 1833: "We know 
how miserable is the condition of rehgious bodies not 
supported by the State." 

The difficulties surrounding reform are consider- 
able, though it is possible to exaggerate them; but 
sooner or later it will be undertaken; and the exclu- 
siveness of State connexion will be broken down, 
either by the method of disestablishment, or by that 
of greater comprehensiveness and union. Would 
that a movement might be made towards union ! Not 
union in every minor doctrine, nor in every detail of 
practice, but unison of effort, coupled with clear prac- 
tical perception of the real needs of the time. To this 
end artificial boundaries must be broken down, and 
the domain covered by the National Church must be 
broadened till it includes all aspiring workers who 
are casting out devils in the one Name. 



CHAPTER VI 
A REFORMED CHURCH AS AN ENGINE OF PROGRESS 

"Religion was once the pillar of fire which went before the human 
race in its great march through history, showing it the way. Now it is 
fast assuming the rdle of the ambulance which follows in the rear and 
picks up the exhausted and wounded. This, too, is a great work, but it 
is not sufficient. And when religion has disburdened herself of all her 
dead values, she will once more, in intimate association with ethics, rise 
to be a power which leads men forward." — Hoffdikg. 

IN the preceding chapter I have urged that the re- 
creation and continuance of a truly National 
Church must involve a great simplification of Church 
enactments, so as to leave fair freedom of interpreta- 
tion concerning the meaning of Christian ceremonies ; 
and that the way to reform lies through a movement 
of breadth and incorporation, which should consoli- 
date the now prevalent desire for greater tolerance 
and union. 

In the belief that the subject is of great import- 
ance, and that the time is nearly ripe for reform, I 
now wish to proceed further in the same direction, 
and to urge that, putting less trust in oaths and form- 
ularies, we should cease from attempting to bind by 
anticipation revolting and unwilling spirits, and show 
more faith in living humanity — especially in the kind 
of humanity which feels called to work in the Chris- 

112 



CHURCH AS AN ENGINE OF PROGRESS 113 

tian vineyard. There need be no forced alteration 
of procedure in religious services, but there should 
be large avoidance of compulsory uniformity. We 
must admit the existence of worshippers of different 
types, we must realise the need for growth and de- 
velopment, and must encourage loyalty to the spirit 
of truth — especially among those who co-operate in 
good works; in the assurance that, by those who do 
the works, all essential doctrine will be sufficiently ac- 
cepted, without compulsion, in due time. 

It may seem inappropriate, and in strict sense im- 
pertinent, for a student of science to feel strongly on 
such topics, but it is an inappropriateness not without 
precedent. The general welfare of humanity, and 
the stabiHty of advancing civilisation, are themes of 
interest to all, whatever our special studies may be; 
and before now a prophet of Art has felt constrained 
to urge that artistic development must be stunted, and 
the highest art impossible, until social conditions are 
improved. So also some writers and speakers, with 
the ear of the populace, condemn a peaceful absorp- 
tion in scientific pursuits, amid the surrounding mass 
of poverty and misery, as a mark of selfishness and 
hard-heartedness. What is the good of abstruse 
scientific theories, they say, when what people need is 
wholesome food and warmth and decent homes ! And 
the thoughts of many a would-be student are per- 
turbed in the same way. These good and sympathetic 
people vicariously feel the pressure of hfe so keenly 
that no occupation save relieving the pain seems worth 
while. Their lives and sympathies are so absorbed 



114 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

and exhausted in the tormenting problems of a great 
city, under present conditions, that they grow to re- 
gard the multifarious interests of the world through 
the perspective of the victim on the rack, to whom 
but one thing is needful. 

But I lay no particular stress on a likelihood of 
injury to knowledge, through prevalent lack of sym- 
pathy with pure science and ignorance of its intrinsic 
value, nor on any other merely intellectual obstacle; 
that is not the sort of thing which paralyses activity 
and acts as a constant sore. If society were in a 
healthy condition, if the development and elevation of 
man had not to take a secondary and quite subordi- 
nate place to the development and accumulation of 
property, a few generations of better education could 
easily mend it on the intellectual side; but it is the 
greedy and essentially uncivilised condition of what 
prides itself as the most practical part of society, and 
the consequent deep-rooted and unadmitted canker 
eating into the bones of the social organism, that is 
disquieting and oppressive. 

It is against all this that a National Church is or 
should be fighting. If these evils are to be uprooted, 
I cannot see how the uprooting can be done by a 
single reformer or prophet — a Carlyle, a Ruskin, or 
a Morris — ^here and there; they must be attacked by 
an organised army of workers and thinkers, imbued 
with the right spirit, informed as to the real facts, 
devoted to the cause of goodness, and trained for the 
detection of long-accustomed errors and for the de- 
velopment of human life. 



CHURCH AS AN ENGINE OF PROGRESS 115 

An eflScient contingent of such an army exists, or 
should exist, in the churches of every denomination. 
Here are men picked out, we must suppose, for their 
keen perception of right and wrong, for their en- 
thusiasm and longing after higher hf e, — ^men who are 
subjected to special training for the work, and then 
sent as missionaries throughout the whole range of 
society, to preach Christ's Gospel and to bring the 
Kingdom of Heaven into realisation upon earth. 
Here should be a general staff of commanding 
power, if only it be in real touch with the people, if 
only it realises the extent and the quality of its mis- 
sion, and is properly prepared to cope with it. But it 
must concentrate its weapons upon the enemy, and 
must not employ them in internecine warfare. An 
army whose officers dispute among themselves, whose 
horse and foot are in conflict, and whose artillery is 
trained upon its engineers, is not an efficient instru- 
ment of conquest. 

Those who realise to some extent what a power for 
good a truly National Church might be, and how with 
comparative ease the earnest rehgious spirit of Eng- 
land could absorb and utilise the energies of such a 
Church — a truly Christian and truly comprehensive 
Church, with the best men attracted, not repelled, the 
present narrow mechanical uniformity superseded by 
breadth and liberality, with errors of past history dis- 
carded, mean jealousies extinguished, and differences 
composed — such persons may feel that the reform 
and strengthening of the Church is perhaps the best 
though not the most direct route towards elimination 



115 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

of the wrongs and amelioration of the evils of our 
social state. At present many of the thinking work- 
ers are alienated from what they imagine is religion; 
and a cry for general secularisation is gaining ground. 
The State may be rightly urged to have nothing to do 
with controversial religion; but the ehmination of re- 
ligious disputes and the elimination of religion are not 
necessarily the same thing. The cessation of all re- 
cognition of religion itself by the State is certainly 
not a step in the right direction. 

The cry for disestablishment is not loud just now; 
but it is liable to be raised at any time, so long as the 
present condition of special privilege continues. The 
cry is really a cry for more equality of treatment — 
for more national recognition all round. Only a few 
want to separate all religion from the State; though 
many might rejoice at freedom from so-called Eras- 
tian control. A section of Presbyterians north of the 
Tweed may feel conscientiously opposed to State- 
connexion of any kind, and some Nonconformists 
may imagine that they feel conscientious objection; 
but that is not the real bugbear in England ; it is the 
limitation and narrowness of the connexion that is 
really objected to. Broaden the Church out till it is 
truly national, by removing the preposterous coercion 
in detail which is now nominally exercised, — and the 
grievance disappears. The National Church could 
then absorb the best activities of all denominations, 
and the nation would be strengthened on its highest 
side to an incalculable extent. Efforts at betterment 
of human conditions are precarious and difficult and 



CHURCH AS AN ENGINE OF PROGRESS 117 

rather blind, so long as mutual hostility or suspicion 
persists among the branches of the Christian Church. 

Either corporate action towards amelioration is im- 
possible, or the Church, in the most comprehensive 
sense, should be the most powerful army for good in 
existence. Its ministers are like officers distributed 
throughout the country, with social prestige and the 
attentive ear of a large proportion of the more 
leisured and opulent classes; these Officers should be 
engaged, even more than at present, in training and 
enlarging and disciphning the forces of progress, 
ready for a re-birth of society. 

Herein hes, I believe, the most vital reform of all; 
but it is not a reform that can be procured by direct 
aim; it must arrive spontaneously after attraction of 
the best and ablest men to the ministry. The nation 
should demand the Ministry of its best men — ^in the 
Church as well as in the Cabinet. 

And the reform contemplated should be real and 
genuine; the Confession of sin repeated in ecclesias- 
tical buildings should be no conventional and mean- 
ingless chant, nor should it be supposed to apply only 
to individual and personal sinfulness; it should above 
all, in collective worship, apply to collective sin, — to 
that sinfulness of society which Christ would de- 
nounce if he came again among us. The vigour of 
that denunciation would, I expect, ecKpse anything 
now heard from pulpits; though it would, I believe, 
take a different and unexpected direction, and con- 
cern itself less with the weaknesses and folHes and 
half -repented sins of humanity, than with the greed. 



lis CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

the selfishness, the sheer individuahsm and mammon- 
worship which excite but occasional reprobation; it 
would attack the heartless and contented acquiescence 
in conditions which debase the soul of a people and 
er.ect the extravagant luxury of a few on the grind- 
ing poverty of many. 

In that sense an acknowledgment of fault is in- 
deed urgently and constantly needed ; but the feeling 
should be driven home and made real; confession 
should never be allowed to degenerate into an easy 
perfunctory form. The selfishness of society is the 
really burning sin of our time, and it is the more dan- 
gerous because so generally unrecognised. It has 
been unrecognised in the chancel as well as in the 
nave — it seems never to have been adequately recog- 
nised by an Established Church as a whole — and to 
this one cause such a Church is thought to owe much 
of its impotence; to this is due much of the mistrust 
of the Church by the people, who have found it in the 
past often against themselves, and siding with the 
rich and powerful; — an attitude singularly different 
from that of its Master. That inspired song the 
'^Magnificat" struck the keynote of primitive Chris- 
tianity. 

Let us freely and heartily admit that a great in- 
ternal effort is now being made to revive the early 
spirit in the Church — the spirit of brotherhood and 
social work. And yet there is room. The enthusiasm 
and exertion of some Anglican leaders are beyond 
praise, but their spirit has not yet permeated the 
whole mass. Wherever thel right spirit exists the 



CHURCH AS AN ENGINE OF PROGRESS 119 

people respond to it, as they did in a.d. 30. Christ's 
teachings frequently dealt with the subject of riches, 
even then, when vast accumulations were hardly feasi- 
ble, save in a form accessible to the ravages of moth 
and rust ; but with the invention of stocks and shares 
the possibilities of property have enlarged, and his 
denunciations now might be unexpectedly welcomed 
by some who do not profess and call themselves Chris- 
tians. There are men — ^men of influence among the 
artisans — who openly scoiF at what they call religion, 
who nevertheless plead "not guilty" for the down- 
trodden victims of pernicious surroundings ; who em- 
phasise the fact that we are our brothers' keepers; 
who really long for a fairer and wholesomer setting 
for the hfe of human beings, and who have been re- 
pelled from Christianity, not by the teachings of 
Christ himself, but by the confusions and errors of his 
nominal disciples. These men call out for the clergy 
to be "converted to Christianity." What do they 
mean? It were perhaps well for ministers of all de- 
nominations to consider what they mean. 

Doubtless in so speaking they are to some extent 
making the mistake illustrated by the above-quoted 
objection to unharassed scientific work. For just as 
strenuous intellectual concentration needs eyes tem- 
porarily shut to the mass of avoidable misery and 
pain — pain caused by human stupidity and by almost 
inhuman selfishness, to which everyone must shut his 
eyes at times, or life were impossible — ^so the clergy 
must at times possess their souls in peace and com- 
fort; they have to minister to believers and sinners 



120 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

and saints, as well as to contend against hypocrites 
and Pharisees and servants of Mammon. The Church 
cannot only struggle and fight, it must sometimes 
stretch out its hands towards the farther shore, un- 
hindered by differences and controversies, and un- 
burdened by the sense of social misery and 
degradation. Not all services need be mission serv- 
ices ; every now and then saints may allow their souls 
to expand in mystic worship of the Supreme, and may 
aim at devout contemplation and ecstacy; on certain 
days their "Divine Service" may be limited to the 
ecclesiastical and esoteric kind which now all but 
monopolises that splendid name. 

But that must not be the chief employment of their 
lives; not while present evils continue. The Church 
must be militant if it is to become triumphant; it 
must learn strategy, and must throw its forces in the 
right direction. Right belief is intensely important, 
but is slow of attainment, and for the present right 
action is more prominently called for. It is no time 
for vegetating and leaf -development : it is fruits that 
will be looked for. There must be far less of "Who- 
soever will be saved must thus think,'' and far more 
of "Whosoever will save others must thus do." God's 
in His heaven truly, but all is not right with the 
world. Books written to-day immerse us, and rightly 
immerse us, in a welter of poverty and misery. The 
bitter cry of the victims of competition, of the out- 
casts of civihsation, and of the children who are born 
to sin and wretchedness, when they are not born to 
death, — ^the cry of multitudes with hardly any chance 



CHURCH AS AN ENGINE OF PROGRESS 121 

of decent happiness and no outlook upon the beauty 
of this world, — this cry must be ringing in the ears of 
God till He cannot hear the chants of the churches, 
however musically they may be intoned, however fre- 
quently they may be repeated, and however completely 
the Ornaments-rubic may be obeyed. The spirit of 
greed is abroad; its net has gathered human beings 
together in heaps, has removed them from the fields 
and hedgerows, and has forced them into crowded 
dens. With success this spirit is doing devil's work; 
it and its ally, smug self-satisfied stupidity, are the 
modern fiends; these are the Satans with which the 
Church should be fighting. 

What we have to learn is that the will of God is to 
be done on earth; that the Kingdom of Heaven is to 
be a present kingdom, here and now, not relegated 
always to the future. Eternity is not something in 
the future, any more than it is something in the past : 
it extends into the future and it extends into the past 
— ^without limit both ways, — ^but this is eternity, this 
moment we are alive, and the message of Christ re- 
lates to ^^is/' not to ^'^will be/" The present is the only 
opportunity for a deed. We are to realise the high- 
est here. If not here in this condition, why anywhere 
in any condition? For wherever we are will always 
be **here," and the time will always be "now." As 
soon as God's will is done on earth as it is done in 
heaven, a gTcat part of the distinction between the two 
states of existence is abolished. That diminution of 
distinction is what the terrestrial Church has to strive 
to accomplish; that is the ultimate object of its in- 



122 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

spiration and its labour: the ideal is to be made real, 
the world is to be transfigured and transformed. The 
task of the priest is the reconciliation, in our conscious- 
ness, of self, the world, and God. 

It is with a knowledge of a mass of feeling and 
effort, some of it at present soured and hostile to- 
wards what it used to hear preached from pulpits of 
nearly every kind, but genuine in its aims and its love 
for humanity, that — ^using the word "Church" in the 
broadest sense, as the combined and corporate society 
of good men in action, — ^men whose lives and energies 
are devoted to the highest aims, in the spirit of real 
and effective and universal Christianity — I urge that 
if the nation is to be regenerated, it must be regener- 
ated through the agency of The Church. There must 
be a union of effort among all who are casting out 
devils in the one Name. 

But how great a change is needed! Contrasting 
the work that is to be done with the means adopted in 
too many cases for avoiding the doing of it, a prophet 
would be justified in exclaiming to the churches, and 
to the Church of this country, "Awake thou that 
sleepest and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give 
theehfe!" 

Divine Service 

The popular notion of Divine Service makes it con- 
sist of a multiplicity of so-called "services," which are 
too often no service at all, but recreation or sensuous 
enjoyment to those engaged in them; — a kind of 
service perhaps as unacceptable to the Deity, under 



CHURCH AS AN ENGINE OF PROGRESS 123 

existing circumstances, as those other religious cere- 
monies inveighed against by the first Isaiah, in a pe- 
riod of less opportunity and responsibility than the 
present, when, as now, it could be said of a large part 
of society, "every one loveth gifts and followeth after 
rewards . . ." and the cry of the oppressed is not 
heard even at the temple altars : 

"To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices . . . who 
hath required this at your hands. . . . Bring no more vain oblations; 
incense is an abomination unto me. . . . Your new moons and your 
appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am 
weary to bear them. . , . When ye make many prayers I will not 
hear. Your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean; put 
away the evil doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil, learn to 
do well; seek justice, set right the oppressor, relieve the oppressed." 

The Church was not founded by temple services, 
nor will it grow in that way. An exceptional Forty 
Days, for the strengthening of the soul, and invigor- 
ation or insurance of its dominion over the body, must 
be wholesome and right ; and other times of seclusion, 
as means to ends, are more than justified; but it is as 
means to an end that they should be regarded, — and 
the end is nothing less than the reform of social 
abuses, and the rescue of humanity from the damning 
conditions of hopeless and degrading squalor. 

The kind of society which allows its children to be 
befouled and degraded and brought up in an atmos- 
phere of crime, is the kind of society that should be 
dealt with by the aid of a millstone and a rope. If it 
uses its fresh human material as manure, it may flour- 
ish in a rank way, it may shoot up a coarse and luxur- 
iant growth, it may yield a crop of millionaires; but 



124. CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

some kinds of fruit are too expensive for rational 
cultivation, some are not altogether wholesome: there 
are trees which must be hewn down and cast into the 
fire. 

Religious bodies may pride themselves on the 
soundness and orthodoxy of their beliefs; but "he 
that doeth righteousness is righteous"; and supposed 
good beliefs are no compensation for bad results, 
either in society or in an individual. To speak 
strictly, such results are inconsistent with healthy be- 
liefs — "do well will follow thought" if the thought be 
of the right kind ; and there is high authority for the 
uselessness of merely crying Lord, Lord ! It is deeds 
far more than creeds that are wanted now ; or rather, 
it is creeds interpreted and acted out in deeds. We 
have to discover j but we have also to realise. We do 
not want matter without form, any more than we want 
form without matter. An idea must be incarnated 
before it is effective. That is how Christianity was 
founded, when the Logos was made flesh, 

"And so the Word had breath and wrought 
With human hands the creed of creeds 
In loveliness of perfect deeds 
More strong than all poetic thought." 

Nothing less than a re-incarnation of the Logos 
will reinvigorate the faith of Christendom and carry 
forward the salvation of mankind. That is the mean- 
ing of the Second Advent. It is in our power to 
make ready the way; that is what our enlightenment 
and education and privileges are for. Man, though 
a little lower than the angels, is a messenger and sery- 



CHURCH AS AN ENGINE OF PROGRESS 125 

ant of God just as truly, and his high mission is mani- 
fest. We as a nation have gone already into the ends 
of the earth; let us see to it that we understand and 
carry out rightly our great commission, in no narrow 
and iconoclastic spirit; remembering that, unless we 
set things right at home, our teaching will be ineffec- 
tive, and sarcasm will be the emotion excited by our 
example. The second incarnation will be in the hearts 
of all men — a reign of brotherhood and love for which 
the heralds are already preparing their songs. Al- 
ready there are "signs of his coming and sounds of 
his feet"; and upon our terrestrial activity the date of 
this Advent depends. 



CHAPTER VII 
SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS REFORM 

IF I were challenged to say wherein I think that an 
improvement might be made in the regulations 
and arrangements for a National Christian Church 
under present conditions, I should emphasise three 
things : 

First, more spontaneity and less monotony in 
Church service of all kinds, and the abandonment of 
mechanical uniformity in worship. 

Second, more liberal education for Ministers; and 
the broadening and simplification of tests, so as to ex- 
clude as few good men as possible. 

Third, and consequent upon these two, clear- 
sighted recognition of the signs of the times, study 
and enhghtened encouragement of true beneficence, 
and stalwart opposition to all abuses of power. 

I hesitate to enter into detail concerning these 
things, and yet I feel impelled to make the attempt; 
so, if I proceed, I wiU do so straightforwardly and 
without expressed apology. 

Rubrics 

First, concerning regulations for the services of the 
Church, Here I plead not for legislation, but for the 

126 



SUGGESTIONS TOWARD REFORM 127 

absence of legislation — for the removal of the close 
and definite legislation which exists now. 

Permissively the Prayer Book can remain un- 
changed, with merely a substitution of "may" for 
"shall," and with the occasional iteration of words 
stating that for many centuries such and such was the 
practice of the Church, — ^thereby indicating a respect 
for historic continuity ; but all sentences laying down 
a prescribed procedure, not as advisable only, but as 
compulsory — so that any the least variation from it 
becomes an illegality to be proceeded against in law 
courts — should surely be cancelled. 

Within the Church itself some rules can be laid 
down, as from time to time may be thought wise by 
the several branches, but they will not be burdensome 
upon the conscience. In the Episcopal branch the 
Bishops will naturally have paternal authority, which 
doubtless they will exercise with moderation and wis- 
dom; in the Presbyterian branch the Presbytery will 
have appropriate authority; in the Congregational 
branch, it is to be presumed, the Council; and so on. 
Details of practice and use of formularies would thus 
be decided on by eligible and sometimes competent 
bodies, who can readily modify them from time to 
time, and can leave what elasticity they think wise; 
and Parliament would be reheved of a burdensome 
and archaic responsibihty. 

The Prayer Book, considered as a legal document, 
was drawn upon the assumption that any freedom or 
elasticity or spontaneity in conducting a service was 
sure to be misused — not through malice and wicked- 



128 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

ness, but through ignorance and stupidity. It is, in 
fact, founded on mistrust of intellectual or spiritual 
competence, — mistrust which tends to justify itself 
by reaction of the mechanical system itself upon 
those constantly subjected to its constricting influ- 
ence. It is also based on the idea that rehgious feel- 
ing is a proper subject for legislation, and that it is 
possible to coerce men's beliefs, to govern their in- 
clinations and control their consciences, by a system of 
rigid rubies and regulations; whereas it is notorious, 
and almost proverbial, that if the will to break law is 
active, the most carefully drafted clauses have ex- 
tremely little binding force. For their interpretation 
depends in no sort on the intention of those who 
framed or of those who authorised them; their inter- 
pretation can be garbled to suit an emergency, or can 
be adapted to a changed system of opinions. 

For instance, the Thirty-Nine Articles, agreed 
upon by Convocation in 1562 "for the avoiding of 
diversities of opinions," were for the most part drawn 
up by Protestants as a bulwark against the Church 
of Rome — a defence against any approach to the doc- 
trines of that Church in certain well-known and fa- 
mous controversies: — such as, Scripture not the Rule 
of faith; Faith not the sole Instrument of Justifica- 
tion; Infallibility of General Councils; Purgatory, 
Pardons, Relics, Invocation of Saints ; five additional 
Sacraments; Transubstantiation ; the sacrifices of the 
Mass. But Cardinal Newman, while still a minister 
of the Church of England, was able to show, in his 



:AJ 



SUGGESTIONS TOWARD REFORM 129 

famous Tract 90, that the wording of the Articles, 
when taken in conjunction with the simiHarly Prot- 
estant "HomiHes," did not, as a matter of fact, ex- 
elude the interpretation regarded as baneful by those 
who formulated them; in fact, that the Articles lent 
themselves to Roman interpretation. They did not 
indeed suggest such an interpretation on their sur- 
face, but they were patient of it. He argued this 
with extreme ingenuity, and some special pleading, 
but, as I think, with a good deal of success. Cer- 
tainly he has had followers who have largely availed 
themselves of an unexpected and welcome elasticity 
in the direction of Romanism, thus unexpectedly dis- 
covered in, or extracted out of, or perhaps foisted 
into what was intended to be a rigidly Protestant 
document and scheme of Protestant theology. 

And so it will always be with a living and growing 
Church, or any other organism — quite irrespective of 
the rights and wrongs of any particular controversy 
or School of thought. If the thought or School 
exist, if living and earnest people feel that truth and 
progress lie in a particular direction, then, however 
ultimately mistaken they turn out to be, no system of 
formularies can bind them; they will not hand over 
their conscience and their judgment to the custody of 
a past. They can be loyal to a hving and present 
spirit in the Church to-day, but not to dead formula- 
ries. These they will either ignore, or will take in a 
non-natural sense, or will twist till they mean the op- 
posite of what they were intended to mean. A form 



ISO CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

of words is usually capable of interpretation in ac- 
cordance with a living will; and if not, it can be 
either ignored or altered. 

History is familiar enough with obsolete and re- 
pealed Statutes : why should the Statutes which regu- 
late so vital a thing as the professed National 
Rehgion alone be free from reconsideration and 
amendment? If non-alteration be regarded as neces- 
sitated by some theory, — ^that theory is a superstition ; 
the only justification for rigid adherence to fixed 
forms is the practical danger of licence and unset- 
tling of faith that might result from freedom. That 
is a point of policy on which it is possible for reason- 
able people to take opposite sides, at any particular 
juncture or crisis; but it will be generally admitted 
that a faith dependent on blinkers and fetters for its 
maintenance is not likely in a progressive age to last 
tnany generations. Anchorage to a submerged rock 
is not safe amid rising waters. 

Suggestions Concerning the Liturgy 

The Liturgy itself must be dealt with by experts, 
and it is barely proper for me to make suggestions; 
but having gone so far I will hesitate no more, but 
will proceed in brief and dogmatic fashion to say 
what I feel constrained to say. For it is an admitted 
fact that the Church of England is less in touch with 
the people than it used to be, and this is not likely to 
be wholly and solely the fault of the people. Indeed 
it may be due to unwisdom rather than to fault of 
any kind. 



SUGGESTIONS TOWARD REFORM ISl 

At present both the Daily Services are supposyed 
to open with the note of personal sin. But it is to a 
great extent unreal, and the declaration of absolution 
follows far too cheaply and easily. Moreover, even 
if such a beginning is appropriate sometimes, or to 
some people, it is not always and equally appropriate ; 
and when constantly repeated such confession be- 
comes merely monotonous, exciting no feeling or in- 
telligence whatever. 

If a service is to be efficacious against sin, it should 
deal with it far more seriously and continuously. If 
felt as a reahty sin is no light matter, and should not 
be casually slurred over. During such a service, 
dominated by the sense of personal sinfulness and 
contrition, the confession of the Communion service 
is likely to be more effective than the other. The 
Litany would be an appropriate continuation: many 
things should precede a declaration of Remission. 

But there should be more than one form of service : 
there might be at least three alternative forms — • 
sometimes one, sometimes another to be used. One 
form of service should sound a different note; it 
might be a service not of contrition but of praise. 
It might open with the Benedictus, continue with the 
General Thanksgiving, with the Te Deum, the Can- 
tate, or the Venite — without the Jewish ending if 
possible — and so forth. And in all these services the 
great and eloquent short prayers need never be omit- 
ted, such as the prayer of St. Chrysostom, the Col- 
lects for Peace and for Grace, and, when appropriate, 
the Evening Collects, as also that for the special day. 



1S2 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

together with Epistle and Gospel and of course the 
Lessons. 

But the multiplicity and wearisome number of ex- 
tracts from the Psalter might be mitigated with ad- 
vantage. The Psalms for the day might be omitted 
altogether. There can be no need to work through 
the whole Psalter every month : it is a useless burden ; 
besides, a few of the Psalms are hardly edifying in 
worship, however instructive they are as historical 
and biographical lessons. 

At times of stress or anxiety a special selection of 
prayers might be made, and at all times extempore 
and spontaneous prayer should be permissible. It is 
profoundly wrong that a petition from the heart of 
a minister of God is never to be uttered during Divine 
service. It is an edict of suppression and impotence 
for the reading desk: of dulness and starvation for 
the pew. "For a certain measure of variety arrests 
and engages the attention of worshippers, and sus- 
tains their interest." The very name "reading desk" 
is full of wrong suggestions. The lectern is appro- 
priately named, and so is the pulpit, but the spirit of 
genuine supplication should brood over at least a part 
of the service. 

Another form of service — where forms are used — 
might be dominated by the idea of collective or social 
struggle and error, by the sense of national and cor- 
porate sin, by effort after better conditions of exist- 
ence for others, and by the spirit of public service. 
Here would come the prayer for Royalty, for Parlia- 
ment, for the Clergy, for all people ; as well as others 



SUGGESTIONS TOWARD REFORM 133 

appropriately chosen, and many added to suit the 
needs of the time. 

At all times it is appropriate to remember the sick 
and suffering, the prisoners and captives, the deso- 
late and oppressed; just as it is always natural to 
pray for peace ; and in these cases prayer is not merely 
intercessory prayer, but is a petition for the impulse 
ourselves to do what lies in our own power to aid in 
these so touching and so accessible ranges of activity 
in direct human service. 

The keynote of each service should be reality. 
There should be no vain repetition and no mere form- 
ulae recited in haste without attention to meaning. 
At present far too much is attempted — far too much 
in quantity, — and this perhaps is responsible for the 
hurry and apparent desire to get through. Surely 
everything said should be said deliberately and im- 
pressively. Possibly, however, the present manner 
of utterance is not really or solely dependent on the 
amount to be got through in the time, but is a rehc 
of the Roman practice of reciting prayers in Latin, 
so as not to be understanded of the common people; 
with the object apparently of exciting vague emotion 
undiluted with intelligence. The practice is vener- 
able — ^but it is hardly consistent with the genius of 
the Church of England. Intelhgibility throughout 
is surely not a thing to be deprecated, if it can be 
secured. To this end the service should be short in 
length, even though not always short in time. Non 
multa sed multum applies intensely to the effective 
use of a Liturgy. A quantity gabbled through is 



134 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

useless and unimpressive. A small amount really 
driven home is far more effective. The Te Deum is 
specially effective when sung slowly and deliberately. 
It was so sung in more than one church at the last 
Declaration of Peace. 

Above all, the Lord's Prayer, with its brief and 
profound sentences, is not properly treated when sub- 
jected to the gabble of a choir. Every sentence in- 
volves thought. The single phrase "Thy Kingdom 
come" speaks volumes, and by itself is sufficient for a 
morning's worship. As a musician takes a theme and 
develops it fugally and antiphonally with devices of 
augmentation and diminution and with illuminating 
counterpoint, so could such a theme as this be made to 
dominate and re-appear throughout a service. The 
repetition of the Lord's Prayer several times in an 
hour signifies the intention to use it as a sort of re- 
frain; but as a refrain it is ineffective, the repetition 
is far too mechanical and careless. The clauses are 
worthy of better treatment than that. 

Take such a clause as "Thy will be done"; — ^it em- 
braces the whole of religion. If I were a musician I 
would set the Lord's Prayer to music, and with 
clashes of instruments and with silences would bring 
out a part of its meaning in unmistakable manner.^ 
The opening phrase "Our Father which art in 
heaven" may in its full form exhibit signs of liturg- 
ical growth or addition, but the note "Father," the 
dominant of all the chords, is authentic enough. It 

1 When I wrote this " The Kingdom " had not been produced, and I 
did not then know the scheme of Sir Edward Elgar's work. 



SUGGESTIONS TOWARD REFORM 1S5 

is all that appears in Luke (Hort and Westeott's 
text), and it is enough. 

Wider Education 

We need only refer in very general terms to the 
sort of education appropriate to a candidate for the 
Ministry of the Gospel. He must be instructed in 
professional subjects, of course — I say nothing about 
those ; but it is plain that if he is to have any influence 
on the thought of his time, he must not be ignorant 
of that thought. If he is to mix with people, and 
adapt himself to various conditions of men, he must 
be able to retain their respect. Immersion in the at- 
mosphere of scholastic theology alone will not suffice. 
The Bible is a literature with which he must be famil- 
iar, but he must not be a man of one book. If he 
knows only the Bible, he will not know that. A broad 
and general education should be his, and the discov- 
eries of his age should not be alien to him. In the 
course of his career he is bound to meet argumentative 
sceptics; men sometimes of narrow sympathies, but 
occasionally of fairly wide reading. These he should 
be able to encounter on their own ground. 

It is true that to take a leading position, and to 
grasp a considerable range of human knowledge, is 
not given to all; there must be some whose lives are 
cast amid simpler surroundings, and who will there 
feel more at home. That is well ; but we are consider- 
ing the ideal up to which a few can be trained, while 
the majority will rise towards it as far as they can, 
though they fall short of attainment. The ideal for 



136 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

a minister of Christ to-day is not represented by that 
held out in the charge of the Ordination service, "ap- 
ply yourselves v^holly to this one thing, and draw all 
your cares and studies this way;" it is not enough, nor 
is it even wise, to limit study to one thing, and to for- 
sake and set aside all other studies. 

Certainly something just and needful is intended, 
by that warning against worldly cares and studies, 
but it is liable to be misunderstood. And even in af- 
fairs of business, it may be argued that as so many 
of the clergy 'have to address men of business, it 
would be wise for them not to be wholly ignorant and 
incompetent even in that atmosphere. It is no easy 
service which the nation demands of its religious 
teachers — it is the highest and most difficult possible; 
and the very best and ablest men are needed for the 
work, if it is to be done properly. At present many 
are deflected to other careers. In some cases the 
deflection is due to attraction elsewhere; but in too 
many it must happen that a faithful and competent 
man is either consciously or unconsciously repelled by 
the demands and injunctions placed in his way, — ^by 
the attempt made to scare his present conscience or to 
snare his future one. He knows that the critical 
spirit is not the spirit of worship ; but he knows also 
that, however successfully his critical faculty may be 
put to sleep for a time, it will rise and torment him 
later on if he abandons his birthright of growth and 
freedom. So he chooses another vocation. 



SUGGESTIONS TOWARD REFORM 137 

Tests 

And now, what about tests ? What tests should be 
applied to candidates for ordination, so as to exclude 
self-seeking hypocrites and stealthy infidels? What- 
ever words are used, the test-formula should be said 
by the candidate himself, not by another for him ; and 
it should be said without prompting. The amount of 
memory needed, for a simple rehearsal like that, is not 
too much to expect from a man to whom preaching 
and the cure of souls is to be entrusted. A simple 
form should suffice : why should not the following be 
held sufficient? 

Here, solemnly in the face of this congregation, I 
declare before Almighty God, to whose holy will I 
entirely submit myself, that I long for Christ's ideal 
of the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth; and, God 
helping me, I will with all my power and abihty 
strive to this end and to no other, with such wisdom 
as it may please the Holy Spirit to confer upon me; 
for whose guidance I will always pray to the Father, 
in the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Such a declaration, made in full voice and with 
uphf ted hand, would be far more solemn and impres- 
sive as an answer to the question whether he thinks 
he is truly called to the ministry of the Church, than 
the present curious expected answer, "I think so." 

Some further declaration on the secular side, 
against the domination of any foreign potentate in 
this realm, and some precautionary statement against 
Jesuitical interpretation and underground scheming. 



138 CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 

would seem to be necessary also. Moreover, it would 
be desirable so to legislate that no weapon of super- 
stition could ever be wielded, by Church authority, so 
as to inflict on the laity that element of compulsion 
from which the clergy had been freed. It is to be 
hoped that certain anti-English auricular practices 
will never be permitted in the National Church, how- 
ever comprehensive it may become. 

Re-incorporation 

This article ought to close with practical sugges- 
tions as to how Nonconformist bodies are to be re- 
incorporated into the National Church ; but that must 
be left to others. I know that at the time of writing 
an unexpected and most regrettable recrudescence of 
hostilities has arisen between the State Church and the 
Free Churches — animosity breaking out over the 
primary education of the children of the poor — show- 
ing that the pugnacious spirit was only dormant, and 
that any irmnediately practical suggestions towards 
general Christian co-operation would be untimely. 

But surely such a state of things can only be tem- 
porary. Either some mutual understanding is possi- 
ble on such a subject, or the country is on the verge of 
an era of secularism. 

It may be that thorough union will come only 
through disestabhshment — ^that a truly comprehen- 
sive National Church is impossible. That is one way 
towards freedom of conscience. Either the State 
Church must be enlarged, broadened, and liberated — 



SUGGESTIONS TOWARD REFORM 139 

freed from exclusive dignities too dearly bought, — 
or it must cease to be a State Church. 

I will not attempt to forecast the course of history : 
all that I am concerned to urge is union, for the pur- 
pose of fighting a common foe, cessation of interne- 
cine quarrels, unison of effort among all the branches 
of the Church of Christ. To me it seems that, as soon 
as artificial restrictions and disabilities are removed, 
the re-incorporation will be almost automatic — or 
would be so were it not for the question of pre-restora- 
tion endowments. If a money question is all that 
would then hinder union — ^if there is nothing more 
serious and fundamental than property to be con- 
sidered — it would be a fact worth finding out. 

My attention has just been called to certain articles 
on Church and State, issued in 1891 by Dr. Martin- 
eau as vol. ii. of his collected Essays^ Reviews, and 
Addresses. Some of them deal with this very matter, 
especially the essay called "The National Church as a 
Federal Union." He pointed out the inconsistency 
of a Church priding itself, simultaneously, both on 
its rigorous uniformity and on the width of the range 
of its belief; and says that while the Acts of Uni- 
formity remain, the work of the Church will be 
honeycombed by the canker of unveracity and self- 
sophistication. 

I will not repeat his arguments and proposals, for 
whether those particular proposals are hopeless or 
not, the spirit of his vision of the unity of Christen- 
dom — ^the longing to see the various folds all one 
flock, in accordance with the parting prayer of Christ, 



140 



CORPORATE WORSHIP AND SERVICE 



**for them which shall believe on me . . . that they 
all may be one" — ^remains as real as ever. Moreover, 
many of the non-established Churches are riper for 
union among themselves now than they were even a 
short time ago ; and I will quote the concluding words 
of the preface to the volume containing Martineau's 
ecclesiastical essays: 

"I cannot withdraw a protest, however hopeless 
it may seem, against allowing the Christian Church 
to remain a mere cluster of rival orthodoxies, disown- 
ing and repelling each other; while, in the inmost 
heart of all, secret affections live and pray, with eye 
upturned to the same Infinite Perfection, and tears 
let fall for the same universal sorrows." 



SECTION III— THE IMMORTALITY OF 

THE SOUL 

The substance of this section was given as the first lecture on the 
Drew foundation established in connexion with Hackney College, Lon- 
don, under the presidency of Dr. Forsyth. 



141 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE TRANSITORY. AND THE PERMANENT 

Part I 

"If a man is shut up in a house, the transparency of the windows is 
an essential condition of his seeing the sky. But it would not be prudent 
to infer that, if he walked out of the house, he could not see the sky 
because there was no longer any glass through which he might see it."- — 
M'Taggart, Some Dogmas of Religion, p. 105. 

DR. M'TAGGART, in his book called Some 
Dogmas of Religion^ from which I have taken 
the excellent apologue ^ prefixed as a sort of motto to 
this article, says some things with which I am not able 
whoUy to agree. I should like to deal with these at 
greater length in some other connexion, but mean- 
while I will quote one of them. In his chapter on 
Human Immortality he says that an affirmative an- 
swer to the question "Has man an immortal soul?" 
would be absurd. He wishes to maintain that man 
is a soul rather than that he has one ; because the pos- 
sessive case would indicate, he says, that the man 
himself was his body, or was something that died with 
the body, and that he owned something, not himself, 
which at death was set free. 

1 This must not be understood as sustaining what Mr. Haldane de- 
risively calls the "window" theory of the senses, as if they were apertures 
through which an inner man looked out at an alien universe: a parable 
must not be pressed imduly. 

143 



144 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

But if we make the correlative statement, and say 
that "man has a body," smxly we are stating an un- 
deniable truth. And as to what the man himself is — 
I apprehend that he is a union of soul and body; and 
that without the one or the other he is incomplete as 
a man, and becomes something else — a corpse per- 
haps, a spirit perhaps, or it may be both. But 
whereas the two were necessarily united during the 
man's life, death separates them; and the final pro- 
duct, whatever it is, can be described as "man" no 
longer. Hence the form of the question preferred 
by Dr. M'Taggart, "Are men inmiortal?" does not 
seem to me so appropriate as the more popular and 
antique form, "Is the soul immortal?" For surely 
without hesitation everybody must give to his ques- 
tion, about man, the answer: "Not wholly," or "Not 
every part of him." Part of what constitutes human 
nature is certainly mortal. On one side man un- 
doubtedly belongs to the animal kingdom, and flour- 
ishes on this planet, the Earth, by aid of particles of 
terrestrial matter which he utilises for that purpose. 

By the soul, then, we must mean that part of man 
which is dissociated from the body at death : that part 
which is characteristic of a living man as distinct from 
a corpse. It may be said that it is really more an 
inter-relation than a part, and that this inter-relation 
is what is meant by vitality ; so that it has been roundly 
asserted that the apparently disappeared "vitality" is 
a nonentity or figment of the imagination, and that to 
speak of it as still existing is like speaking of the 



THE TRANSITORY AND THE PERMANENT 145 

*'horologity" of a clock which someone has smashed 
with a hammer. 

Very well, admitting that vitality is a mere relation 
between the body and something else, it is just the 
nature of this "something else" that we are discussing; 
and it is no help to start by assuming that this dissoci- 
ated and perhaps imaginary portion is the man him- 
self, any more than it is helpful to start with the 
equally gratuitous assumption that the visible and 
tangible body is the man himself. 

The vanished constituent with its attributes may 
turn out to be more intimately characteristic of, and 
essential to, the man's real nature and existence, than 
is the material instrument or organ which has been 
discarded without having disappeared : they may turn 
out to have a more permanent and therefore a more 
real existence than the temporary vehicle which served 
to manifest those attributes and properties during 
their short tenure of earth life ; they may be more es- 
pecially the seat of his personality and individuality; 
— but those are just the things which are subject- 
matter for debate, and they must not be postulated a 
priori. 

As a matter of nomenclature, I want to discrimi- 
nate between the term "vitality" and the term "life"; 
to use the former as signifying a union or relation be- 
tween the body and something else, and the latter to 
denote the unknown entity which by interaction with 
material particles is responsible for their vitality. 
True, life, thus defined, is a portion or partial aspect 



146 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

of what is often spoken of as "soul," but the term Ufa 
can be used by many to whom some of the associations 
of the more comprehensive term are objectionable. 

The first simple and important truth that must be 
insisted on, is the commonplace but often ignored and 
even denied fact, that there is nothing immortal or 
persistent about the material instrument of our pres- 
ent senses, except the atoms of which it is composed. 

Any notion that these same atoms will at some 
future date be re-collected and united with the dis- 
sociated and immaterial portion, so as to constitute 
once more the complete man as he appeared here on 
earth, who is thereafter to last for ever, — any notion 
of that sort, though most unfortunately believed, or 
at least taught, by one great branch of the Christian 
Church, is a superstition, not by any means yet really 
and thoroughly extinct or without influence on senti- 
ment, even in quarters where it may be denied in 
words. It is too much to expect that is should be so 
extinct. 

Nevertheless, the teaching of natural science is in 
accordance with the teaching of common sense in this 
matter. The present body is wholly composed of ter- 
restrial particles; it consists of atoms of matter col- 
lected from food and air, and arranged in a certain 
compHcated and characteristic ^-^rm. The elemental 
atoms are first combined into the complex aggregate 
called protoplasm, which is an unstable compound 
whose chemical constitution is at present unknown, 
but whose property it is to be always in a state of flux : 
it is not rigid or stagnant or fixed, but is constantljr 



THE TRANSITORY AND THE PERMANENT 147 

breaking down into simpler constituents on one side, 
and constantly being renewed or built up on the other, 
so that it has a kind of hf e-history, for a certain per- 
iod. This period of activity, in any given case, lasts 
as long as the balance between association and disso- 
ciation continues. While the balance is tilting in 
favour of assimilation, we have the period of youth 
and growth ; when the balance begins to tilt in favour 
of disintegration, we have the commencement of old 
age and decay ; until at a certain, or rather an uncer- 
tain, stage, the disintegrating forces gain a final 
victory, and assimilation wholly and sometimes sud- 
denly ceases. Then presently and by slow degrees the 
I'esidue of protoplasm left in the body — ^unless it is 
speedily incorporated into some other animal or plant 
— is resolved into similar and simpler compounds, and 
ultimately into inorganic constituents; and so is re- 
stored to mother Earth, whence it sprang. 

What, then, can be legitimately meant by the 
phrase Resurrection of the body? Well it is highly 
desirable to disentangle the element of truth which 
underlies ancient behefs and is the condition of their 
durability; and, whatever may be the case with other 
forms of religion, it is clear that Christianity both by 
its doctrines and its ceremonies rightly emphasises the 
material aspect of existence. For it is founded upon 
the idea of incarnation; and its beHef in some sort of 
bodily resurrection is based on the idea that every real 
personal existence must have a double aspect — ^not 
spiritual alone, nor physical alone, but in some way 
both. Such an opinion, in a refined form, is common 



148 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

to many systems of philosophy and is by no means 
out of harmony with science. 

Christianity, therefore, reasonably supplements the 
mere survival of a discarnate spirit, a homeless wan- 
derer or melancholy ghost, with the warm and com- 
fortable clothing of something that may legitimately 
be spoken of as a "body" ; that is to say it postulates 
a supersensually appreciable vehicle or mode of mani- 
festation, fitted to subserve the needs of future ex- 
istence as our bodies subserve the needs of terrestrial 
life: an etherial or other entity constituting the per- 
sistent "other aspect," and fulfilling some of the func- 
tions which the atoms of terrestrial matter are con- 
strained to fulfil now. And we may assume, as con- 
sonant with or even as part of Christianity, the doc- 
trine of the dignity and sacramental character of some 
physical or quasi-material counterpart of every spirit- 
ual essence. 

But though some such connexion is essential, any 
actual instance of it may be accidental and temporary. 
Take our present incarnation as an example. We 
display ourselves to mankind in the garb of certain 
clothes, artificially constructed of animal and vegeta- 
ble materials, and in the form of a certain material 
organism, put together by processes of digestion and 
assimilation and likewise composed of terrestrial ma- 
terials. The source of these chemical compounds is 
evidently not important ; nor is their special character 
maintained. Whether they formed part of sheep or 
birds or fish or plants, they are assimilated and be- 
come part of us ; being arranged by our subconscious 



THE TRANSITORY AND THE PERMANENT 149 

activities and vital processes into appropriate form, 
just as truly as other materials are consciously woven 
into garments, no matter what their origin. More- 
over, just as our clothes wear out and require darning 
and patching, so our bodies wear out; the particles 
are in continual flux, each giving place to others and 
being constantly discarded and renewed. The identity 
of the actual or instantaneous body is therefore an 
affair of no importance: the body which finally dies 
is no more fully representative of the individual than 
any of the other bodies which have gradually been dis- 
carded en route: there is no reason why it should per- 
sist any more than they: the individuality, if there is 
one, must lie deeper than any particular body, and 
must belong to whatever it is which put the particles 
together in this shape and not another. 

There is nothing at all similar to this automatic de- 
cay and replacement, this preservation of form amid 
diversity of particles, in the mechanism of a clock. 
All that its "horologity" could mean would be the 
special assemblage or grouping of parts which enables 
it to fulfil certain functions till it wears out, or so 
long as its worn parts are periodically replaced by the 
clockmaker. The "vitahty" of an organism means 
this and more, for it can replace its own worn parts. 
A clock has nothing of personal identity, it is not a 
good illustration of a living organism. The identity 
of a river is a much closer analogy ; and many are the 
associations which have accordingly gathered round 
the names "Tiber," "Ganges," "Nile." Rivers have 
alwa;^s had attributed to them a kind of poetic per- 



150 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

sonality, though no one can have really supposed them 
to possess genuine life. 

I wish here to make a short digression in order to 
say that the old and true statement that "everything 
flows and nothing is stagnant," thus conspicuously ex- 
emplified by the material basis of life, need not in the 
least signify, as it is sometimes taken to signify, that 
everything is evanescent and nothing is permanent; 
still less than everything is fanciful and nothing is 
real. The ancient aphorism of the inspired Hera- 
clitus makes a statement about existence which is 
vitally and comprehensively true; and it is a truth 
which constitutes the keynote of evolution. 

To return. The more frankly and clearly the truth 
about the body is realised, namely, that the body is a 
flowing and constantly changing episode in material 
history, having no more identity than has a river, no 
identity whatever in its material constitution, but only 
in its form, — identity only in the personal expression 
or manifestation which is achieved through the agency 
of a fresh and constantly differing sequence of ma- 
terial particles, — ^the more frankly all this is realised, 
the better for our understanding of most of the prob- 
lems of life and being. 

The body is the instrument or organ of the soul: 
and in its special form and aggregation is certainly 
temporary, — exceedingly temporary, for in the most 
durable cases it lasts only about a thousand months — 
a mere instant in the life-history of a planet. 

But if the body is thus trivial and temporary. 



THE TRANSITORY AND THE PERMANENT 151 

though while it lasts most beautiful and useful and 
wonderful, what is it that puts it together and keeps 
it active and retains it fairly constant through all the 
vicissitudes of climate and condition, and through all 
the fluctuations of material constitution? 

For remember that we are now not deahng with the 
human body alone. All animals have bodies and so 
have plants. All that has been said, of the tem- 
porary character of the material aggregate animated 
by life, applies to a vast variety of organisms, many 
of which can be encountered on the earth : not to speak 
of the myriads of other worlds. 

What causes the very same particles to be incor- 
porated first into the form of a blade of grass, then 
into the form of a sheep, then into the form of a man ; 
then into the form of some law invertebrates — "politic 
worms" (for whose existence, however, in normal 
cases there is, I beheve, no biological authority), — 
then perhaps into a bird, then once more into vegeta- 
tion — ^perhaps a tree? What is it that combines and 
arranges the particles, so that if absorbed by root or 
leaves they correspond to and form the tissue of an 
oak, if picked up by talons, they help to feed the mus- 
cles of an eagle, if cooked for dinner, they enter into 
the nerves and brain of a man? What is the control- 
ling entity in each case, which causes each to have its 
own form and not another, and preserves the form 
constant amid the widest diversity of particles? 

We call it life, we call it soul, we call it by various 
names, and we do not know what it is. But common 



152 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

sense rebels against its being "nothing" ; nor has anjr 
genuine science presumed to declare that it is purely 
imaginary. 

Let us now, therefore, try to define what we mean 
by "soul," though in our necessary ignorance the task 
is not easy. The term is indeed so ambiguous that 
many may think it is better avoided altogether; but 
the more precise term "mind" is too narrow and exclu- 
sive for our present purpose. 

The following definition may sufficiently represent 
my present meaning: The soul is that controlling 
and guiding principle which is responsible for our per- 
sonal expression and for the construction of the body, 
under the restrictions of physical condition and an- 
cestry. In its higher development it includes also 
feeling and intelhgence and will, and is the store- 
house of mental experience. The body is its instru- 
ment or organ, enabling it to receive and to convey 
physical impressions, and to affect and be affected by 
matter and energy. 

When the body is destroyed, therefore, the soul dis- 
appears from physical ken ; when the body is impaired, 
its function is interfered with, and the soul's physical 
reaction becomes feeble and unsatisfactory. Thus 
has arisen the popular misconception that the soul of 
a slain person or of a cripple or paralytic has been des- 
troyed or damaged; whereas only its instrument of 
manifestation need have been affected. The kind of 
evils which really assault and hurt the soul belong to 
a different category. 

It may be said that, in so far as soul is responsible 



THE TRANSITORY AND THE PERMANENT 153 

for bodily shape, soul seems identical with the princi- 
ple of lifCj, and that all hving things must possess 
some rudiment of soul. 

Well, for myself, I do not see how to draw a hard- 
and-fast distinction between one form of hfe and 
another. All are animated by something which does 
not belong to the realm of physics and chemistry, but 
lies outside their province, though it interacts with the 
material entities of their realm. Life is not matter, 
nor is it energy, it is a guiding and directing prin- 
ciple ; and when considered as incorporated in a certain 
organism, it, and all that appertains to it, may well 
be called the soul or constructive and controlling 
element in that organism. 

The soul in this sense is related to the organism in 
somewhat the same way as the "Logos" is related to 
the universe ; it is that without which it does not exist, 
that which vivifies and constructs, or composes and in- 
forms, the whole. 

Moreover, in the higher organisms the soul con- 
spicuously has lofty potentialities ; it not only includes 
what is connoted by the term "mind," but it begins to 
acquire some of the character of "spirit"; by which 
means it becomes related to the Divine Being. Soul 
appears to be the Hnk between "spirit" and "matter" ; 
and, according to its grade, it may be chiefly associ- 
ated with one or with the other of these two great as- 
pects of the universe. 

Now let us consider what is meant by Immortality. 
Is there anything that is not subject to death and an- 



154, THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

nihilation? Can we predicate immortality about any- 
thing? Everything is subject to change, but are all 
things subject to death? Without change there could 
be no activity, and the -universe would be stagnant; 
but without death it is not so clear that its progress 
would be obstructed; unless death be only a sort of 
change. 

But is it not a sort of change? Consider some ex- 
amples : When a piece of coal is burnt and brought 
to an apparent end, the particles of long-fossilised 
wood are not destroyed; they enter into the atmos- 
phere as gaseous constituents, and. the long-locked- 
up solar energy is released from its potential form 
and appears once more as light and heat. The burn- 
ing of the coal is a kind of resurrection; and yet it is 
a kind of death too, and to the superficial eye nothing 
is left but ashes. 

Take next the destruction of a picture or a statue, 
let it be torn to pieces or mashed to powder: there is 
nothing to suggest resurrection about that, and the 
beautiful form embodied in the material has disap- 
peared. 

Such a dissolution is a more serious matter, and 
may be the result of a really malicious act. It is per- 
haps the nearest approach to genuine destruction that 
is possible to man, and in some cases represents the 
material concomitant of a hideous crime. True, noth- 
ing material is destroyed, the particles weigh just as 
much as before ; yet the expression is gone, the beauty 
is defaced, an idea perhaps is lost. 

But, after all, the idea was never really in the 



THE TRANSITORY AND THE PERMANENT 155 

marble or in the pigments; it was embodied or incar- 
nate or displayed by them, in a sense, but it was not 
really there. It was in the mind of the artist who 
constructed the work, and it entered the mind of the 
spectators who beheld it — at least of those who had 
the requisite perceptive faculty; but it was never in 
the stone at all. The inert material, from the impress 
of mind it had received, was able to call out and liber- 
ate in a kindred mind some of the original feelings and 
thoughts which had gone to fashion it. Without a 
perceptive faculty, without a sympathetic mind, the 
material was powerless. Set up in, or sent to, a 
world inhabited only by lower animals, it would con- 
vey no message whatever, it would be wholly mean- 
ingless; just as a piece of manuscript would be, in 
such a world, though it contained the divinest poem 
ever written. 

Nevertheless, by the supposed act of vandalism a 
certain incarnation of beauty has been lost to the 
world. Though even so it is not destroyed out of the 
universe : it remains the possession of the artist and of 
those privileged to feel along with him. 

Consider next the destruction of a tree or of an ani- 
mal. Here again the particles remain as many as be- 
fore, it is only their arrangement that is altered; the 
matter is conserved but has lost its shape ; the energy 
is constant in quantity but has changed its form. 
What has disappeared? The thing that has disap- 
peared is the life — the life which appeared to be in 
the tree or the animal, the life which had composed or 
constructed it by aid of sunshine and atmosphere, and 



156 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

was manifested by it. Its incarnate form has now 
gone — no more will that life be displayed amidst its 
old surroundings, it has disappeared from our ken; 
apparently it has disappeared from the planet. Has 
it gone out of existence altogether? 

If it were really generated de novOj created out of 
nothing, at the birth of the animal or of the tree, we 
should be entitled to assume that at death it may have 
returned to the nonentity whence it came. 

But why nonentity? What do we know of nonen- 
tity? Is it a reasonable or conceivable idea? Things 
when they vanish are only hidden. And so con- 
versely: it is readily intelligible that some existence, 
some bodily presentation, can be evoked out of a 
hidden or imperceptible or latent or potential exist- 
ence, and be made actual and perceptible and what we 
call real. Instances of that sort are constantly oc- 
curring. It occurs when a composer produces a piece 
of music, it occurs when an artisan constructs a piece 
of furniture, it occurs when a spider spins a web, and 
when the atmosphere deposits dew. But what ex- 
ample can we think of where existence is created out 
of nonentity, where nothing turns into something? 
We can think of plenty of examples of change, of or- 
ganisation, of something apparently complex and 
highly developed arising out of a germ apparently 
simple; but there must always be at least a seed, or 
nothing will arise; nothing can come out of nothing: 
something must always have its origin in something. 

A radium atom is an element possessing in itself 
the seeds of its own destruction. Every now and then 



THE TRANSITORY AND THE PERMANENT 157 

it explodes and fires off a portion of itself. This can 
occur several times in succession, and finally it seems 
to become inert and to cease to be radium or anything 
like it; it is thought by some to have become lead, 
while the particles thrown off have become helium, or 
occasionally neon, or sometimes argon. Let us sup- 
pose that. We cannot stop there, we are bound to go 
on to ask what was the origin of the radium itself. 
If it explodes itself to pieces in the course of a few 
thousand years, why does any radium still exist? 
How is it being born? Does it spring into existence 
out of nothing, or has it some parent? And if it has 
a parent, what was the origin of that parent? 

Never in physical science do we surmise for a 
moment that something suddenly springs into being 
from previous non-existence. All that we perceive 
can be accounted for by changes of aggregation, by 
assemblage and dispersion. Of material aggregates 
we can trace the history, as we can trace the history of 
continents and islands, of suns and planets and stars ; 
we can say, or try to say, whence they arose and what 
they will become ; but never do we state that they will 
vanish into nothingness, nor do we ever conjecture 
that they arose from nothing. 

It is true that in rehgion we seek to trace things 
farther back still, and ultimately say that everything 
arose from God ; and there, perforce, our chain of ex- 
istence, our hnks of antecedence and sequence must 
cease. But to allow such a statement to act as an in- 
tellectual refuge can only be a concession to human 
infirmity. Everything truly arose from God; but 



158 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

there is nothing specially illuminating in such a state- 
ment as that, for everything is in God now ; and every- 
thing will continue to be animated and sustained by 
God to all eternity. It is not legitimate explicitly to 
introduce the idea of God to explain the past alone; 
the term applies equally to the present and to the 
future. 

So the assertion just made, though true enough, is 
only a mode of saying that what was in the beginning, 
is now, and ever shall be, world without end. This 
is a religious mode of expressing our conviction of the 
uniformity of the Eternal Character, but it is not a 
statement which adds to our scientific information. 
yVe may not be able to understand Nature, we are 
certainly unable to comprehend God. If we say that 
Nature is an aspect of the Divine Being, we must be 
speaking truly ; but that only strengthens our present 
argument as to its durability and permanence, for we 
shall certainly not thus be led to attribute to anything 
so qualified any power of either jumping into or 
jumping out of existence. To make the statement 
that Nature is an aspect of the Godhead is explicitly 
to postulate eternity for every really existing thing, 
and to say that what we call death is not annihilation 
but only change. Birth is change. Death is change. 
A happy change, perhaps ; a melancholy change, per- 
haps. That all depends upon circumstances and 
special cases, and on the point of view from which 
things are regarded; but, anyhow, an inevitable 
change. 

I want to make the distinct assertion that no really 



THE TRANSITORY AND THE PERMANENT 159 

existing thing perishes, but only changes its form. 

Physical science teaches us this, clearly enough, con- 
cerning matter and energy : the two great entities with 
which it has to do. And there is no likelihood of any 
great modification in this teaching. It may, perhaps, 
be induced in the long-run to modify the form of 
statement and to assert conservation and real existence 
of ether and motion (or, perhaps only, of ether in 
motion) rather than of matter and energy. That is 
quite possible, but the apparent variation of statement 
is only a variant in form ; its essence and meaning are 
the same, except that it is now more general and would 
allow even the atoms of matter themselves to have 
their day and cease to be ; being resolved, perhaps, into 
electricity, and that into some hitherto unimagined 
mode of motion of the ether. But all this is far from 
being accepted at present, and need not here be con- 
sidered. 

The distinction between what is transitory and 
what is permanent is quite clear. Evanescence is to 
be stated concerning every kind of "system" and ag- 
gregation and grouping. A crowd assembles, and 
then it disperses: it is a crowd no more. A cloud 
forms in the sky, and soon once more the sky is blue 
again; the cloud has died. Dew forms on a leaf: a 
little while, and it has gone again — gone apparently 
into nothingness, like the cloud. But we know better, 
both for cloud and dew. In an imperceptible form it 
was and soon into an imperceptible form it will again 
have passed; but meanwhile there is the dewdrop 
glistening in the sun, reflecting all the movements of 



160 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

the neighbouring world, and contributing its little 
share to the beauty and the serviceableness of creation. 

Its perceptible or incarnate existence is temporary. 
As a drop it was born, and as a drop it dies; but as 
aqueous vapour it persists : an intrinsically imperisha- 
ble substance, with all the properties persisting which 
enabled it to condense into drop or cloud. Even it, 
therefore, has the attribute of immortality. 

So, then, what about hfe? Can that be a nonentity 
which has built up particles of carbon and hydrogen 
and oxygen into the form of an oak or an eagle or a 
man? Is it something which is really nothing; and 
soon shall it be manifestly the nothing that an ig- 
norant and purblind creature may suppose it to be? 

Not so ; nor is it so with intellect and consciousness 
and will, nor with memory and love and adoration, 
nor all the manifold activities which at present 
strangely interact with matter and appeal to our 
bodily senses and terrestrial knowledge ; they are not 
nothing, nor shall they ever vanish into nothingness 
or cease to be. They did not arise with us : they never 
did spring into being ; they are as eternal as the God- 
head itself, and in the eternal Being they shall endure 
for ever. 

Though earth and man were gone. 

And suns and universes ceased to be, 
And Thou were left alone. 

Every existence would exist in Thee." 

So sang Emily Bronte on her deathbed, in a poem 
which Mr. Haldane quotes in full, in his GiiFord Lec- 
tures, as containing true philosophy. And, surely 



THE TRANSITORY AND THE PERMANENT l6l 

in this respect there is a unity running through the 
universe, and a kinship between the human and the 
Divine: witness the eloquent ejaculation of Carlyle: 

"What, then, is man! What, then, is man! 

"He endures but for an hour, and is crushed before 
the moth. Yet in the being and in the working of a 
faithful man is there already (as all faith from the 
beginning, gives assurance) a something that pertains 
not to this wild death-element of Time ; that triumphs 
over Time, and is, and will be, when Time shall be no 
more." 



CHAPTER IX 
THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY 

Paet II 

"After death the soul possesses self-consciousness, otherwise it would 
be the subject of spiritual death, which has already been disproved. 
With this self-consciousness necessarily remains personality and the 
consciousness of personal identity." — Kant, quoted by Heikze. 

IN the preceding chapter on "The Transitory and 
the Permanent," permanence was claimed for the 
essence, the intrinsic reality, the soul of anything ; and 
transitoriness for its bodily presentment — ^that is, for 
all such things as special groupings, arrangements, 
systems, which are liable to break up into their con- 
stituent elements, and cease to cohere into a united 
and organised aggregate. The only real destruction 
known to us, in fact, is this disintegration or breaking 
up of an assemblage: things themselves never spring 
into or out of existence. All we can cause or can ob- 
serve is variety of motion — ^never creation or annihila- 
tion. And even the motion is transferred from one 
body to another, and transformed in the process ; it is 
not generated from nothing, nor can it be destroyed. 
Special groupings and appearances are transitory; it 
is their intrinsic and constructive essence which is per- 
manent. 

But then, what about personality, individuality, our 

162 



THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY. 163 

own character and self? Are these akin to the tem- 
porary groupings which shall be dissolved, or are thejr 
among the substantial reahties that shall endure? 

Let us see how to define the idea of personality or 
personal and individual character : — A memory, a con- 
sciousness, and a will, in so far as they form a consis- 
tent harmonious whole, constitute a personahty ; which 
thus has relations with the past, the present, and the 
future. And we shall argue that personahty or indi- 
viduahty itself dominates and transcends all temporal 
modes of expression, and so is essentially eternal 
wherever it exists. 

The hf e of an insect or a tree may in some sort — 
must, one would think, in some sort — ^persist, but 
surely not its personal character! Wliy not? Be- 
cause, presumably, it has none. We can hardly im- 
agine that such a thing has any individuahty or per- 
sonality : it appears to us to be merely one of a group, 
a mere unit in a world of being, without personality 
of its own. That is what I assume, though I do not 
dogmatise; nor do I consider it certain, for some of 
the higher animals. Anyhow we may at once admit 
that, for all those things which only share in a gen- 
eral hfe, the temporarily separated portion of that 
general hfe will return, undiiFerentiated and unident- 
ified, to its central store: just as happens in the bet- 
ter-understood categories of matter and energy. 

That is simple enough. But suppose that some in- 
dividual character, some personality, does exist. 
Suppose that not only life, but intellect and emotion 
and consciousness and will are all associated with a 



164 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

certain physical organism; and suppose that these 
things have a real and undeniable existence — an ex- 
istence strengthened and compacted by experience 
and suffering and joy, till it is no longer only a func- 
tion of the material aggregate in which for a time it 
is embodied, but belongs to a universe of spirit closely 
related to immanent and transcendent Diety; what 
then? If all that really exists, in the highest sense, is 
immortal, we have only to ask whether our person- 
ality, our character, our self, is sufficiently individual, 
sufficiently characteristic, sufficiently developed, — in 
a word, sufficiently real; for if it is, there can then be 
no doubt of its continuance. It may return, indeed, 
in some sense, to the central store, but not without 
identity; its individual character will be preserved. 

Conservation of Value 

Professor Hoif ding of Copenhagen goes farther 
than this. In his book on the Philosophy of Religion 
he teaches that what he calls the axiom of "the con- 
servation of value" is the fundamental ingredient in 
all religions — the foundation without which none of 
them could stand. In his view, as a philosopher, 
agreeing therein with Browning and other poets, no 
real Value or Good is ever lost. The whole progress 
and course of evolution is to increase and intensify 
the Valuable — ^that which "avails" or is serviceable 
for highest purposes, — and it does so by bringing 
out that which was potential or latent, so as to make 
it actual and real. Ileal it was, no doubt, all the time 
in some sense, as an oak is imphcit in an acorn or a 



THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY 165 

flower in a bud, but in process of time it unfolds and 
adds to the realised Value of the universe. 

To carry out this idea we might define immortality 
thus: 

Immortality is the persistence of the essential and 
the real: it apphes to things which the universe has 
gained — ^things which, once acquired, cannot be let 
go. It is an example of the conservation of Value. 
The tendency of evolution is to increase the actuality 
of Value, converting it from a potential into an avail- 
able form. 

Value may, however, be something more than 
merely constant in quantity, according to Professor 
HoiFding. Experience of evolution suggests that 
it must increase. Certainly it passes from latent to 
more patent forms; and though it sometimes swings 
back, yet, on the whole, progress seems upward. Is 
it not legitimate to conjecture that while Matter and 
Energy neither increase nor decrease, but only 
change in form; and while life too perhaps is con- 
stant in quantity, though alternating into and out of 
incarnation according as material organisms are put 
together or worn out; yet that some of the higher 
attributes of existence, — ^love, shall we say, joy per- 
haps, what may be generahsed as Good generally, or 
as Availabihty or Value, — ^may actually increase: 
their apparent alternations being really the curves of 
an upward-tending spiral? It is an optimistic faith, 
but it is the faith of the poets and seers. Whatever 
evil days may fall upon an individual or a nation, or 
even sometimes on a whole planet, yet the material is 



\ 



166 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

subordinate to the spiritual; and if the spiritual per- 
sists, it cannot be stationary : it must surely rise in the 
3cale of existence. For evil is that which retards or 
frustrates development, in any part of the universe 
subject to its sway, and, accordingly, its kingdom 
cannot stand: evil contains an essentially suicidal ele- 
ment, so that on the whole the realm of the good must 
tend to increase, the realm of the bad to diminish. 

"No existing universe can tend on the whole to- 
wards contraction and decay ; because that would fos- 
ter annihilation, and so any incipient attempt would 
not have survived; consequently an actually existing 
and flowing universe must on the whole cherish de- 
velopment, expansion, growth: and so tend towards 
infinity rather than towards zero. The problem is 
therefore only a variant of the general problem of 
existence. Given existence, of a non-stagnant kind, 
and ultimate development must be its law. Good and 
evil can be defined in terms of development and decay 
respectively. This may be regarded as part of a 
revelation of the nature of God" {The Substance of 
Faith). 

From this point of view the law of evolution is that 
Good shall on the whole increase in the universe with 
the process of the suns: that inmaortahty itself is a 
special case of a more general Law, namely, that in 
the whole universe nothing really finally perishes that 
is worth keeping, that a thing once attained is not 
thrown away. 

The general mutability and mortality in the world 
need not perturb us. The things we see perishing 



THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY 167 

and dying are not of the same kind as those which 
we hope will endure. Death and decay, as we know 
them, are interesting physical processes, which may 
be studied and understood; they have seized the im- 
agination of man, and govern his emotions, perhaps 
unduly, but there is nothing in them to suggest ulti- 
mate destruction, or the final triumph of ill; they are 
necessary correlatives to conception and birth into a 
material world; they do not really contradict an opti- 
mistic view of existence. 

So far as we can tell, there need be no real waste, 
no real loss, no annihilation; but everything suffi- 
ciently valuable, be it beauty, artistic achievement, 
knowledge, unselfish affection, may be thought of as 
enduring henceforth and for ever if not with an in- 
dividual and personal existence, yet as part of the 
eternal Being of God. 

Permanent Element in Man 

And this carries with it the persistence of person- 
ality in all creatures who have risen to the attainment 
of God-like faculties, such as self-determination and 
other attributes which suggest kinship with Deity 
and make their possessor a member of the Divine 
family. For whether or not this incipient theory of 
the conservation of value stand the test of criticism, 
it is undeniable that, as in the quotation from Carlyle 
at the end of my last article, seers do not hesitate to 
attribute permanence and timeless existence to the 
essential element in man himself. They realise that 
he is one with the universe, that he may come to be in 



168 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

tune with the infinite, and that his spasmodic efforts 
towards a state wherein the average will rise to a level 
now attained by only the few, are part of the evolu- 
tionary travaihng of the whole creation. "All 
omens," says Myers, "point towards the steady con- 
tinuance of just such labour as has already taught us 
all we know. Perhaps, indeed, in this complex of in- 
terpenetrating spirits our own effort is no individual, 
no transitory, thing. That which lies at the root of 
each of us hes at the root of the Cosmos too. Our 
struggle is the struggle of the Universe itself; and 
the very Godhead finds fulfilment through our up- 
ward-striving souls" (Myers, Human Personality ^ ii. 
p. 277). 

To return to the problem of individual existence 
and to a more prosaic atmosphere. What we are 
claiming is no less than this — ^that, whereas it is cer- 
tain that the present body cannot long exist without 
the soul, it is quite possible and indeed necessary for 
the soul to exist without the present body. We base 
this claim on the soul's manifest transcendence, on its 
genuine reality, and on the general law of the per- 
sistence of all real existence. 

Recognition of the permanent element in man and 
of the probabiKty of his individual survival, — that 
is to say, of the persistence of intelligence and mem- 
ory after the destruction of the brain — ^if such re- 
cognition is to be of the greatest use to mankind, 
should be based on general considerations open and 
familiar to all, and be independent of special study 
with results verified by only a few. But if general 



THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY 169 

arguments are insufficient, and if the reader has pa- 
tience with a more specific line of investigation, then 
I submit that the question can also be studied by the 
aid of observation and experiment, and that a con- 
viction of persistence of personahty can be strength- 
ened by the record and discovery of specific facts. 

Expression of Thought in Terms of Motion 

The brain is definitely the link between the psy- 
chical and the physical, which in themselves belong to 
different orders of being. In the psychical region 
"thought" is the dominant reahty; in the physical 
"motion." The bodily organism mysteriously enables 
one to be translated in terms of the other. Without 
some connecting mechanism, such as that afforded 
by brain, nerve, and muscle, the things we call intelli- 
gence and will however real, would be incapable of 
moving the smallest particle of matter. Now, since 
it is solely by moving matter that we can operate at all 
in the material world, or can make ourselves known 
to our fellows, — for in the last resort speech and 
writing and every action reduce themselves to muscu- 
lar movement, — and since death inhibits this power, 
by breaking the link between soul and body, death 
naturally stops all manifestation, interrupts all inter- 
course, and so has been superficially thought to be the 
annihilation of the soul. 

But such a conclusion is quite unwarranted. Exist- 
ence need not make itself conspicuous: things are 
always difficult to discover when they make no im- 
pression on the senses; the human race is hardly yet 



170 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

aware, for instance, of the Ether of space ; and there 
may be a multitude of other things towards which it 
is in the same predicament. 

Superficially, nothing is easier than to claim that 
just as when the brain is damaged the memory fails, 
so when the brain is destroyed the memory ceases. 
The reasoning is so plausible and obvious, so within 
reach of the meanest capacity, that those who use it 
against adversaries of any but the lowest intelligence 
might surely assume that it had already occurred to 
them and exhibited its weak point. The weak point 
in the argument is its tacit assumption that what is 
non-manifest is non-existent; that smoothing out the 
traces of guilt is equivalent to annihilating a crime; 
and that by destroying the mechanism of interaction 
between the spiritual and the material aspects of ex- 
istence you must necessarily be destroying one or 
other of those aspects themselves. 

The brain is our present organ of thought. 
Granted; but it does not follow that brain controls 
and dominates thought, that inspiration is a physio- 
logical process, or that every thinking creature in the 
universe must possess a brain. Really we know too 
little about the way the brain thinkSj if it can prop- 
erly be said to think at all, to be able to make any such 
assertion as that. We terrestrial animals are all as it 
were one family, and our hereditary links with the 
psychical universe consist of the physiological 
mechanism called brain and nerve. But these most 
interesting material structures are our servants, not 
our masters : we have to train them to serve our pur- 



THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY: 171; 

poses; and if one side of the brain is injured, the 
other side may be trained to act instead. Destroy cer- 
tain parts of the brain completely, however, and con- 
nexion between the psychic and the material regions 
is for us severed. True ; but cutting off or damaging 
communication is not the same as destroying or dam- 
aging the communicator: nor is smashing an organ 
equivalent to kilhng the organist. When the At- 
lantic cable broke, in 1858, intimate communication 
between England and America was destroyed; but 
that fact did not involve the destruction of either 
America or England. It appears to be necessary to 
emphasise this elementary matter, because the con- 
trary contention is supposed to cut straight at the root 
of every kind of general argument for survival hith- 
erto adduced. 

But after all, it may be said, the above contention 
proves nothing either way; granted that breach of 
communication does not mean destruction of terminal 
stations, it leaves the question as to their persistence 
an open one. Yes, it does ; it leaves persistence to be 
sustained by general arguments, such as those of the 
preceding chapter, which were directed to establish- 
ing the priority in essence of the spiritual to the ma- 
terial, of idea to bodily presentation; and to be sup- 
ported by any kind of additional and special experi- 
ence. 

Argument from Telepathy 

First of all, then, we must ask, are we quite sure 
that the breach of intercourse is as clear and definite 



172 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

and complete as had been supposed? We have no 
glimmering conception of the process by which men- 
tal activity operates on the matter of the brain ; so we 
cannot be sure that its influence is limited entirely to 
the brain material belonging to its own special organ- 
ism. It may conceivably be able to affect other brains 
too, either directly, or indirectly through an imme- 
diate influence on the mind associated with them. In- 
telligent communication is normally carried on by 
means of conventional mechanical movements, calcu- 
lated to set up special aerial or etherial tremors; 
which have to be apprehended through sense organs 
and brain, and interpreted back again into thought. 
But we are constrained to contemplate the possibiUty 
of a more direct method, and to ask, is there ever any 
direct psychical connection between mind and mind, 
irrespective of intermediate physical processes? It 
is a definite though difficult question, to be answered 
by experience. And an affirmative answer would 
suggest, among other things, that though individual- 
ity is dependent upon brain for physical manifesta- 
tion, it may not be dependent on brain for psychical 
existence. 

Such independence is difficult to prove directly, in 
a way convincing to those who approach the subject 
without previous study, or with prejudices against it; 
because in the proof, or to produce any recordable 
impression, a bodily organ — such as brain or muscle 
— must be used. We are not, and cannot be, com- 
pletely independent of the body in this earth fife : but 
we can bring forward facts which seem to indicate 



THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY 173 

an activity specially and peculiarly psychical, and 
only slightly physical. Of physical modes of com- 
munication between mind and mind there are many 
varieties : none of which do we really understand, be- 
yond a knowledge of their physical details, though 
we are well accustomed to them all; but we know of 
one which appears not to be physical, save at its ter- 
minals, and which has the appearance of being, in its 
mode of transmission, exclusively psychical. That is 
to say, it occurs as if one mind operated directly 
either on another brain or on another mind across a 
distance (if distance has any meaning in such a case) ; 
or as if one mind exerted its influence on another 
through the conscious intervention of a third mind 
acting as messenger; or as if mental intercourse were 
effected unconsciously, through a general nexus of 
communication — a universal world-mind. All these 
hypotheses have been suggested at different times by 
the phenomenon of telepathy; and which of them is 
nearest the truth it is difficult to say. There are some 
who think that all are true, and that different means 
are employed at different times. 

What we can assert is this, that the facts of "tele- 
pathy," and in a less degree of what is called "clair- 
voyance," must be regarded as practically estab- 
lished, in the minds of those who have studied them. 
There may be, indeed there is, still much doubt about 
the explanation to be attached to those facts ; there is 
uncertainty as to their real meaning, and as to 
whether the idea half -suggested by the word "tele- 
pathy" is completely correct; but the facts them- 



174 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

selves are too numerous and well authenticated to be 
doubted, — even if we except from our survey the di- 
rectly; experimental cases designed to test and bring 
to book this strange human faculty. 

Thus telepathy opens a new chapter in science, and 
is of an importance that cannot be exaggerated. 
Even alone, it tends mightily to strengthen the argu- 
ment for transcendence of mind over body, so that 
we may reasonably expect the one to be capable of 
existing independently and of surviving the other; 
though by itself, or in a discarnate condition, it is 
presumably unable to achieve anything directly on 
the physical plane. But telepathy is not all. Telep- 
athy is indeed only the first link in a chain: there 
are further links, further stages on the road to 
scientific proof. 

Arguments from Pr^ternormal Psychology 

Have we no facts to go upon, only speculation, 
concerning the actual persistence of individual mem- 
ory and consciousness, — of much that characterises a 
personaKty — apart from a bodily vehicle? Facts we 
have; but they are not generally known, nor are they 
universally accepted: they have still, many of them, 
to run the gauntlet of scientific criticism even among 
the few students who take the trouble to study them. 
Their theory has been worked at pertinaciously, but 
it is still in a rudimentary stage, and by the mass of 
scientific men the whole subject is at present ignored, 
because it seems an elusive and disappointing inquiry, 
and because there are other fields which are easier of 



THE PERMANENCE OF, PERSONALITY 175 

cultivation and promise more immediate fertility. 
The chief of the facts to which we can appeal be- 
long to one of three marked regions : 

First, experiences connected with genius, vision, 
and dream, extending up to premonition and 
clairvoyance, — the specially 'psychological re- 
gion. 

Second, the singular modification of bodily faculty 
sometimes experienced, — ^ranging from un- 
usual extention of sensory and muscular 
powers, such as hypersesthesia and what is tech- 
nically known as automatism, up to various 
grades of what has been described as material- 
isation ; — all which great group of asserted and 
controverted phenomena may be said to belong 
to the physiological region. 

Third, the at first sight disconcerting facts con- 
nected with apparent changes, dislocations and 
disintegrations, of personality — what we may 
call the pathological region. 

Concerning all this mass of information, not only 
is the theory far from distinct, but many of the facts 
themselves are only sparsely known: they belong to 
a special branch of study, which, conducted under 
many difficulties, cannot be properly apprehended 
at second hand. 

Sufiice it therefore to say, that whereas it is quite 
clear that manifestation of memory and conscious- 
ness, in a form capable of being appreciated by or 
demonstrated to us, is evidently not possible without 



176 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

a material organism or body of some kind, yet — ^in 
the judgment of many students of the subject — a 
surviving memory or personahty, even though dis- 
carnate, need not be utterly and completely pre- 
vented from stiU occasionally operating in our 
sphere. 

For as it was possible for what, in Chapter VIII., 
we defined as "soul" to compose and employ an organ 
suited to itself, out of various kinds of nutriment, 
so also it appears to be possible, though not without 
difficulty and extraordinary trouble, for a discarnate 
entity or psychical unit occasionally to utilise a body 
constructed by some other similar "soul," and to make 
an attempt at communication and manifestation 
through that. It has even been conjectured that by 
special exertion of psychical power a temporary 
organ of materiahsation can be constructed, presum- 
ably of organic particles, sufficient to enable some 
interaction between spirit and matter, and even to 
display some personal characteristics, through the 
utilisation of a form partially separate from, though 
also closely connected with, and as some think even 
borrowed from, the bodily organism of the auxiliary 
person known technically as the "medium" of com- 
munication, whose presence is certainly necessary. 
In favour of such an occurrence there is much evi- 
dence, some of it of a weak kind, some of it quite 
valueless; but again some of it is strong, evidenced 
by weighing, and vouched for by experienced nat- 
uralists and observers such as Dr. A. R. Wallace and 
Sir W. Crookes, as well as by the eminent physi- 



THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY 177; 

ologist Professor Richet, and by Professors Schiap- 
arelli, Lombroso, and other foreign men of science. 

The idea here suggested is admittedly bizarre and 
at first sight absurd; nevertheless something of the 
kind has the appearance of being true, in spite of its 
having been discredited by much professional fraud 
exercised upon too wilHng dupes. The phenomenon 
on which it is based is at any rate a puzzling one, call- 
ing for further investigation: which must ultimately 
pursue it into a region quite apart from and beyond 
the obvious possibihties of fraud ; that is to say, must 
not only establish it as a fact, if it be a fact, but 
must ascertain the laws which govern it. 

Argument from Automatism 

More frequently, however, a simpler method, akin 
to telepathy and to what is commonly known as in- 
spiration or "possession," is employed; whereby some 
portion of the brain of "the automatist" appears to 
be operated upon directly, so as to produce intelligible 
statements, in speech or writing, often of consider- 
able length and occasionally in unknown languages; 
— these messages being, at least in the cases where 
they are not merely subjective and of little interest, 
apparently irrespective of the ordinary consciousness, 
and only slightly sophisticated by the normal mental 
activity, of the person by whom this organ is usually^ 
wielded, and to whom it nominally "belongs." 

The body, in fact, or some part of the body, 
though usually controlled and directed by the par- 
ticular psychical agent which has composed and 



ITS THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

grown accustomed to it, can sometimes be found 
capable of responding to a foreign intelligence, act- 
ing either telepathically through the mind or telerg- 
ically by a more direct process straight on the brain. 
Sometimes the controlling intelligence belongs to a 
living person, as in cases of hypnotism ; more usually 
it is an influence emanating from what we must con- 
sider some portion of the automatist's own larger or 
subliminal self. Occasionally a person appears able 
to respond to thoughts or stimuli embedded, as it 
were, among psycho-physical surroundings in a man- 
ner at present ill understood and almost incredible; 
— as if strong emotions could be unconsciously re- 
corded in matter, so that the deposit shall thereafter 
affect a sufficiently sensitive organism, and cause sim- 
ilar emotions to reproduce themselves in its subcon- 
sciousness, in a manner analogous to the customary 
conscious interpretation of photographic or phono- 
graphic records, and indeed of pictures or music and 
artistic embodiment generally. And lastly, there are 
people who seem able to respond to a psychical agency 
apparently related to the surviving portion of intelli- 
gences now discarnate, in such a way as to suggest 
that the said intelligences are picking up the thread 
of their old thoughts, and entering into something like 
their old surroundings and their old feelings — 
though often only in a more or less dreamy and semi- 
entranced condition — for the purpose of conveying 
hallucinatory or other impressions to those who are 
still in the completely embodied state. 

It would be a great mistake to assume, without 



THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY 179 

proof, that any given automatic message really 
emanates from the person to whom it is attributed; 
and such a generalisation applied to all so-called mes- 
sages would be grotesquely untrue. But then neither 
should we be safe in maintaining that none of them 
have an authentic character, and that they are never 
in any degree what they purport to be. The elimina- 
tion of the normal personality of the automatist, and 
the proof of the supposed communicator's identity, 
are singularly difficult; but in a few cases the evi- 
dence for identity is remarkably strong. The sub- 
stance of the message and the kind of memory dis- 
played in these cases belong not at all to the brain of 
the automatist, but clearly to the intelligence of the 
asserted control ; of whose identity and special knowl- 
edge they are sometimes strongly characteristic. As 
to the elimination of normal personaKty, however, 
it must be admitted that, in all cases, the manner and 
accidents or accessories of the message are liable to 
be modified by the material instrument or organ 
through which the thought or idea is for our in- 
formation reproduced. The reproduction of a 
thought in our world appears to demand distinct ef- 
fort on the part of a transcendental thinker, and it 
seems to be almost a matter of indifference, or so to 
speak of accident not determined by the thinker, 
whether it make its appearance here in the form of 
speech or of writing, or whether it take the form of a 
work of art, or of unusual spiritual illumination. 
This is surely true of orthodox inspiration, as well 
as of what we are now conjecturing may perhaps be 



180 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

an attempt at some additional method of arousing 
ideas in us. Moreover, in both cases, lucidity is only 
to be expected, and is only obtained, in flashes. The 
best of us only get flashes of genius now and then, 
and the experience is seldom unduly prolonged. 
Why should we expect it to be otherwise? 

There is another aspect of the matter that may be 
mentioned too. For most of the difficulty of inter- 
communication we ourselves must be held responsible. 
Our normal immersion in mundane affairs may be 
very sensible and practical, and is probably essential 
to earthly progress until our civilisation is rather 
more consolidated and developed, but it can hardly 
facilitate communion with another order of existence. 
Nor is it likely that we should be able to appreciate 
the intimate concerns of that other order, even if it 
were feasible to convey a detailed account of them. 

It is true that messages are often vague and disap- 
pointing even when apparently genuine; untrue that 
they are invariably futile and useless and inappro- 
priate, — such an assertion could only be made by peo- 
ple imperfectly acquainted with the facts. In certain 
cases it is quite clear that a bodily organism has been 
controlled by something other than its usual and 
normal intelligence, and in a few cases the identity 
of the control has been almost crucially established: 
though that is a matter to be dealt with more tech- 
nically elsewhere. 



THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY 181 

Subliminal Faculty 

The extension of faculty exhibited during some 
trance states has suggested that a similar enlarge- 
ment of memory and consciousness may follow or ac- 
company our departure from this life, and is partly 
responsible for the notion of the existence of a sub- 
liminal or normally unconscious portion of our total 
personality. On this subject I can conveniently refer 
to the summary contained in Myers' chapters on 
"Disintegrations of Personality" and on "Genius," 
in vol. i. of his Human Personality, This doctrine — 
the theory of a larger and permanent personality of 
which the conscious self is only a fraction in process 
of individualisation, the fraction being greater or less 
according to the magnitude of the individual, — this 
doctrine, as a working hypothesis, illuminates many 
obscure facts, and serves as a thread through an other- 
wise bewildering labyrinth. It removes a number of 
elementary stumbling-blocks which otherwise ob- 
struct an attempt to realise vividly the incipient 
stages of personal existence; it accounts for the ex- 
traordinary rapidity with which the development of 
an individual proceeds ; and it eases the theory of or- 
dinary birth and death. It achieves all this as well as 
the office for which it was originally designed, 
namely, the elucidation of unusual experiences, such 
as those associated with dreams, premonitions, and 
prodigies of genius. Many great and universally 
recognised thinkers, Plato, Virgil, Kant, I think, ^ 

iln justification of the inclusion of this name, the following majr 



182 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

and Wordsworth, all had room for an idea more or 
less of this kind ; which indeed, in some form, is almost 
necessitated by a consideration of our habitually un- 
conscious performance of organic function. What- 
ever it is that controls our physiological mechanism, 
it is certainly not our own consciousness; nor is it 
any part of our recognised and obvious personahty. 

"We feel that we are greater than we know." 

Our present state may be likened to that of the 
hulls of ships submerged in a dim ocean among many 
strange beasts, propelled in a bhnd manner through 
space; proud perhaps of accumulating many barna- 
cles as decoration; only recognising our destination 
by bimaping against the dock wall. With no cogni- 
sance of the deck and the cabins, the spars and the 
sails ; no thought of the sextant and the compass and 
the captain ; no perception of the lookout on the mast, 
of the distant horizon; no vision of objects far ahead, 
dangers to be avoided, destinations to be reached, 
other ships to be spoken with by other means than 
bodily contact; — a region of sunshine and cloud, of 
space, of perception, and of intelligence, utterly in- 
accessible to the parts below the water-hne. 

To suppose that we know and understand the uni- 
verse, to suppose that we have grasped its main out- 
lines, that we reahse pretty completely not only what 
is in it, but the still more stupendous problem of what 

suffice as an example: "For if we should see things and ourselves as 
they are, we would see ourselves in a world of spiritual natures with 
which our entire real relation neither began at birth nor ended with the 
body's death." — Kant, quoted by Heinze. 



THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY 183 

IS not and cannot be in It — as do some of our gnostic 
(self-styled "agnostic") friends — ^is a presumptuous 
exercise of limited intelligence, only possible to a cer- 
tain very practical and useful order of brain, which 
has good solid work of a commonplace kind to do in 
the world, and has been restricted in its outlook, let 
us say by Providence, in order that it may do that 
one thing and do it well. 

And just as we fail to grasp the universe so do we 
fail as yet to know ourselves: the part of which we 
have become aware, the part which manifestly gov- 
erns our planetary life, is probably far from being 
the whole/ The assumption that the true self is com- 
plex, and that a larger range of memory may ulti- 
mately be attained, is justified by the researches of 
alienists, and mental physicians generally, into those 
curious pathological cases of "strata of memory" or 
dislocations of personality, on which many medical 
books and papers are available for the student. In 
cases of multiple personality, the patients, when in 
the ordinary or normally conscious state, are usually 
ignorant of what has happened in the intervening pe- 

1 Such an admission is quite consistent with recognition of the mo- 
mentous character of this present stage of existence, not only while it 
lasts, but as influencing, and^ contributing in every sense to, the future; 
the doctrine of the subliminal self throws no sort of contempt or dis- 
couragement on the things which really ought to interest us here and now. 
There is "danger of losing sight of the ideal in our immediate life, and 
thinking that it is to be found only in the past or in the future," says 
Professor Caird; whereas our little struggle is part of the great conflict 
of good and evil in the universe, and we should be encouraged were we to 
''realise that our life is not an aimless or meaningless vicissitude of 
events, but an essential step in the great process." 



184 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

riods when they were not in that state, and are not 
aware of what they have done when in one of the 
deeper states; but as soon as the personahty has en- 
tered an ultra-normal condition, it is often found to 
be aware, not only of its previous actions when in 
that condition, but also of what was felt and known 
while at the ordinary grade of intelligence. 

The analogy pointed to is that whereas we living 
men and women, while associated with this mortal or- 
ganism, are ignorant of whatever experience our 
larger selves may have gone through in the past — 
yet when we wake out of this present materialised 
condition, and enter the region of larger conscious- 
ness, we may gradually reahse in what a curious 
though legitimate condition of ignorance we now are ; 
and may become aware of our fuller possession, with 
all that has happened here and now fully remem- 
bered and incorporated as an additional experience 
into the wide range of knowledge which that larger 
entity must have accumulated since its intelligence 
and memory began. The transition called death may 
thus be an awaking rather than a sleeping ; it may be 
that we, still involved in mortal coil, are in the more 
dream-like and unreal condition : 

"Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep — 
He hath awakened from the dream of life — 
'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, keep 
With phantoms an unprofitable strife." 

(Shelley's "Adonais.") 

The ideas thus briefly indicated have been sug- 
gested by a mass of unfamiliar experience, upon 



THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY 185 

which it is legitimate to speculate, though quite ille- 
gitimate to dogmatise; but in case they seem too 
fanciful to serve as any part of a basis for human 
immortality, it may be well to show how clearly the 
possibility of a larger and fuller existence than the 
present is indicated by facts with which we are all 
famihar. 

Argument from Genius 

It must be apparent how few of our faculties can 
really be accounted for by the need of sustenance 
and by the struggle for existence; and how those 
necessary faculties and powers naturally assume an 
overweening importance here and now, from the fact 
that they are so specially fitted to our present sur- 
roundings. So that the less immediately practical 
mental and spiritual characteristics can be spoken of 
by anthropologists as if they were of the nature of 
sports and by-products, not in the direct line of evo- 
lutional advance. 

But, says Myers: 

"The faculties which befit the material environment 
have absolutely no primacy, unless it be of the merely 
chronological kind, over those faculties which science 
has often called by-productSj because they have no 
manifest tendency to aid their possessor in the strug- 
gle for existence in a material world. The higher 
gifts of genius — poetry, the plastic arts, music, phil- 
osophy, pure mathematics — all of these are precisely 
as much in the central stream of evolution — are per- 
ceptions of new truth and powers of new action just 



186 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

as decisively predestined for the race of man — as the 
aboriginal Australian's faculty for throwing a boom- 
erang or for swarming up a tree for grubs. There 
is, then, about those loftier interests nothing exotic, 
nothing accidental; they are an intrinsic part of that 
ever-evolving response to our surroundings which 
forms not only the planetary but the cosmic history 
of all our race." 

We can regard these higher faculties, these inspir- 
ations of genius and the like, not only as contributing 
to our best moments now, but as forecasts or indica- 
tions of something still more specially appropriate to 
our surroundings in the future — anticipations of 
worlds not realised — rudiments of what will develop 
more fully hereafter; so that their apparent incon- 
gruousness and occasional inconvenience, under pres- 
ent mundane conditions, are quite natural. Ulti- 
mately they may be found to be nearer to the heart 
of things than the attributes which are successful in 
the stage to which this world has at present attained; 
though they can only exhibit their full meaning and 
attain their full development in a higher condition 
of existence, — ^whether that be found by the race on 
this planet or by the individual in a life to come. 

"An often-quoted analogy has here a closer appli- 
cation than is commonly apprehended. The grub 
comes from the egg laid by a winged insect, and a 
winged insect it must itself become; but meantime it 
must for the sake of its own nurture and preserva- 
tion acquire certain larval characters — characters 



THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY 187 

sometimes so complex that the observer may be ex- 
cused for mistaking that larva for a perfect insect 
destined for no further change save death. Such 
larval characters acquired to meet the risks of a tem- 
porary environment, I seem to see in man's earthly 
strength and glory. In these I see the human ana- 
logues of the poisonous tufts which choke the captor 
— the attitudes of mimicry which suggest an absent 
sting — the 'death's head' coloration which disconcerts 
a stronger foe." 

For the triumphs of natural selection, then, we 
must look not to the spiritual faculties and endow- 
ments of the race, but to the businesslike masterful- 
ness which makes one man a conqueror and another 
a millionaire. These we can regard as larval charac- 
ters, of special service in the present stage of exist- 
ence, but destined to be discarded, or modified almost 
out of recognition, in proportion as a higher state is 
attained. This I take to be the deep meaning of the 
Gospel sentence beginning "How hardly!" 
But to continue Myers' biological parable: 
"Meantime the adaptation to aerial life is going 
on; something of the imago or perfect insect is per- 
formed within the grub; and in some species, even 
before they sink into their transitional slumber the 
rudiments of wings still helpless protrude awkwardly 
beneath the larval skin. Those who call Shelley, for 
instance, *a beautiful but ineffectual angel beating 
his wings in the void,' may adopt, if they choose, this 
homelier but exacter parallel. Shelley's special gifts 



188 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

were no more by-products of Shelley's digestive sys- 
tem than the wings are by-products of the grub" 
(Myers, i. p. 97). 

The meaning, you see, is that they are in the direct 
line of evolution, when the whole of existence is taken 
into account; and that similarly in the evolution of 
genius we are watching the emergence of unguessed 
potentialities from the primal germ, — the first reveal- 
ings 

"Of faculties, displayed in vain, but born 
To prosper in some better sphere." 

(Browning's "Paracelsus.") 

Moreover, what is true for the individual must be 
true also in some measure for the race. Embryology 
teaches us that each organism rapidly recapitulates 
or epitomises, amid how different conditions, its an- 
cestral past history. It is legitimate to extend the 
same idea to the future, and to regard the progress 
of the individual and the progress of the race as in 
some degree concurrent; since their potentialities are 
similar, though their surroundings will be different. 
This argument, so far as I know, is novel, but not 
undeserving of attention. 

Argument from Mental Pathology 

And as to the disintegrations of personality, — the 
painful defects of will, the lapses of memory, the 
losses of sensation — such as are manifested by the 
hysteric patients of the Salpetriere and other hos- 
pitals, — the lesson to be learnt from those patholog- 
ical casQs is not one of despair at the weaknesses and 



THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY 189 

ghastly imperfections possible to humanity; rather, 
on this view, it is one of hope and inspiration. For 
they point to the possibility that our present condi- 
tion may be as much below an attainable standard as 
the condition of these poor patients is below what by 
a natural convention we have agreed to regard as the 
"normal" state. We might indeed feel bound to re- 
gard it not only as normal but as ultimate, were it not 
that some specimens of our race have already tran- 
scended it, have shown that genius, almost super- 
human, is possible to man, and have thereby fore- 
shadowed the existence of a larger personality for 
us all. Nay, they have done more, — for in thus real- 
ising in the flesh some of the less accessible of human 
attributes, they have become the first-fruits of a 
brotherhood higher than the human; we may hail 
them as the forerunners of a nobler race. Such a 
race, I venture to predict, will yet come into exist- 
ence, not only in the vista of what may seem to some 
of us an unattractive and unsubstantial future, but 
here in the sunshine on this planet Earth. 

"Prognostics told 
Man's near approach; so in man's self arise 
August anticipations, symbols, types 
Of a dim splendour ever on before." 

For as the hysteric stands in comparison with us 
ordinary men, so perhaps do we ordinary men stand 
in comparison with a not impossible ideal of faculty 
and of self-control. "Might not," says Myers, "all 
the historic tale be told, mutato nomine^ of the whole 
race of mortal men? What assurance have we that 



190 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUU 

from some point of higher vision we men are not as 
these shrunken and shadowed souls? Suppose that 
we had all been a community of hysterics, all of us 
together subject to these shifting losses of sensation, 
these inexplicable gaps of memory, these sudden de- 
fects and paralyses of movement and of will. As- 
suredly we should soon have argued that our actual 
powers were all with which the human organism was 
or could be endowed. . . . Nay, if we had been a 
populace of hysterics we should have acquiesced in 
our hysteria. We should have pushed aside as a fan- 
tastic enthusiast the fellow-sufferer who strove to tell 
us that this was not all that we were meant to be. As 
we now stand, — each one of us totuSj, teres ^ atque 
rotundus in his own esteem, — we see at least how 
cowardly would have been that contentment, how vast 
the ignored possibilities, the forgotten hope. Yet 
who assures us that even here and now we have de- 
veloped into the full height and scope of our being? 
A moment comes when the most beclouded of these 
hysterics has a glimpse of the truth. A moment 
comes when, after a profound slumber, she wakes 
into an instant clair — a flash of full perception, which 
shows her as solid, vivid realities all that she has in 
her bewilderment been apprehending phantasmally as 
a dream. ... Is there for us also any possibility of 
a like resurrection into reality and day? Is there for 
us any sleep so deep that waking from it after the 
likeness of perfect man we shall be satisfied; and 
shall see face to face ; and shall know even as also we 
are known?" 



THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY. 191 

Whatever may be the answer to this question, it is 
undoubtedly true now — and that it is true is largely 
owing to him and his co-workers — that * 'these dis- 
turbances of personality are no longer for us — as 
they were even for the last generation — ^mere empty 
marvels, which the old-fashioned sceptic would often 
plume himself on refusing to believe. On the con- 
trary, they are beginning to be recognised as psycho- 
pathological problems of the utmost interest; — ^no 
one of them exactly Hke another, and no one of them 
without some possible apercu into the intimate struc- 
ture of man." 

Religious Objections 

Whatever objections to the above argument may 
be adduced from the side of science — and there are 
sure to be many, for free criticism is its natural at- 
mosphere, — there is one from the side of rehgion — 
more often felt than expressed perhaps — ^which I 
must in conclusion briefly notice: 

Objection is sometimes taken against any attempt 
being made gradually to arrive at what in process of 
time may come to be regarded as a scientific proof 
of such a thing as immortality; on the ground that 
it is an encroachment on the region of faith, a pre- 
sumptuous interference with what ought to be 
treated as the territory of religion alone. 

To meet these objectors on their own ground, they 
might be reminded of such texts as 2 Pet. i. 5, Prov. 
XXV. 2, as well as of the still more authoritative en- 
eouragement to investigation contained in Luke xi. 



192 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 

9 and in 1 John i. 5 ; the latter, or indeed both, being 
an expression of the basal postulate of the man of 
science, namely, the ultimate intelligibility of the Uni- 
verse. 

But, after all, an objection of this kind can only be 
felt, first by those who think that knowledge is the 
enemy of behef , instead of its strengthener and sup- 
porter, and second by those who unconsciously fear 
that the domain of reUgion is finite, and who there- 
fore resent encroachments as diminishing its already 
too restricted area. It cannot be felt by people who 
realise that the dominion of religion is unhmited, and 
that there is infinite scope for faith, however far 
knowledge — ^real and accurate scientific knowledge — 
extends its boundaries. The enlargement of those 
boundaries is all gain; for thus the one area is in- 
creased while the other is not diminished. Infinity 
cannot be diminished by subtraction. No such ob- 
jection to the spread of knowledge was felt by that 
inspired writer who hoped for the time when "the 
earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as 
the waters cover the sea." 

Whatever science can establish, that it has a right 
to establish: more than a right, it has a duty. What- 
ever science can examine into, that it has a right to 
examine into. If there be things which we are not 
intended to know, be assured that we shall never 
know them: we shall not know enough about them 
even to ask a question or start an inquiry. The in- 
tention of the universe is not going to be frustrated 
by the insignificant eff*orts of its own creatures. If 



THE PERMANENCE OF PERSONALITY 193 

we refrain from examination and inquiry, for no bet- 
ter reason than the fanciful notion that perhaps we 
may be trespassing on forbidden ground, such hesi- 
tation argues a pitiful lack of faith in the goodwill 
and friendliness and power of the forces that make 
for righteousness. 

Let us study all the facts that are open to us, with 
a trusting and an open mind; with care and candour 
testing all our provisional hypotheses, and with slow 
and cautious verification making good our steps as 
we proceed. Thus may we hope to reach out farther 
and ever farther into the unknown; sure that as we 
grope in the darkness we shall encounter no clammy 
horror, but shall receive an assistance and sympathy 
which it is legitimate to symbolise as a clasp from the 
hand of Christ himself. 



SECTION IV— SCIENCE AND CHRIS 

TIANITY 



19s 



CHAPTER X 

SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS THE RE-INTERPRETATION 
OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 



NOW that religion is becoming so much more real, 
is being born again in the spirit of modern criti- 
cism and scientific knowledge, may it not be well to 
ask whether the formal statement of some of the doc- 
trines which we have inherited from mediaeval and 
still earlier times cannot be wisely and inoffensively 
modified? There is usually some sort of forced sense 
in which almost any statement can be judged to have 
in it an element of truth, especially a statement which 
embodies the beliefs of many generations. But 
when the element of truth is quite other than had been 
supposed, and when the original statement has to be 
tortured in order to display it, it may be time to con- 
sider whether without harm its mode of expression 
can be reconsidered and redrafted, — ^to the ultimate 
benefit indeed of that rehgion of truth and clearness 
which we all seek to attain. 

No doubt the crudity of popular statements of doc- 
trine is recognised by many modem theologians and 
experts, who have travelled far beyond the original 
intention and superficial interpretation of their 
creeds and formularies; and these may be ready and 
anxious for revision, although their responsible ut- 

197 



198 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

terances on fundamental subjects are duly restrained 
and cautious, lest they offend the ignorant whose 
minds are not yet ripe. In that case it may be per- 
missible for laymen to show that they at least are 
ready for a doctrinal revision — a kind of stocktaking 
such as is necessary from time to time in all Kving 
and expanding subjects, and is especially necessary 
now after a century of notable advance in natural 
knowledge. 

It may be objected that revision of religious for- 
mulae is no concern of mine ; and there is force in the 
retort. I find that I have said below that harm is 
liable to dog the footsteps of a well-meaning fanatic 
or a blatant fool. Possibly it is in something akin 
to the spirit of the fanatic that I take the risk of en- 
tering upon what may prove a thorny path, though 
I earnestly trust that very little pain to others need 
accrue from any errors of mine. 

Consider, then, the doctrine of the Atonement, and 
let us ask whether the expression of that doctrine 
traditionally and officially held or supposed to be held 
by the churches to-day is satisfactory. 

In days when the vicariousness of sin could be ac- 
cepted, and when an original fall of Adam could be 
held as imputed to the race, it was natural to admit 
the possibility of a vicarious punishment and to ac- 
cept an imputed righteousness. In the days when 
God could be thought of as an angry Jehovah who 
sent pestilences until He was propitiated by the smell 
of a burnt-oflFering, it was possible to imagine that 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 199 

the just anger of an offended God could be met by 
the sacrifice of an innocent victim. 

The fall of man and the redemption by blood there- 
fore in a measure go together, and may be said to 
constitute the backbone of Evangelical Christianity, 
which in some of its crude and revivalistic forms 
always lays great stress upon blood and its potent re- 
deeming efficacy. 

But all this is much older than Christianity ; and it 
is clarifying to realise how these strange doctrines, 
preached even at this day, represent a survival of re- 
ligious behefs held Gyo or six centuries before the 
Christian era. 

In those admirable translations of Euripides with 
which Professor Gilbert Murray has dehghted the 
heart not only of scholars but of at least one student 
of science, we find in his notes on The Bacchce the fol- 
lowing passages: 

"A curious relic of primitive superstition and 
cruelty remained firmly embedded in Orphism — a 
doctrine irrational and unintelhgible, and for that 
very reason wrapped in the deepest and most sacred 
mystery: a behef in the sacrifice of Dionysus him- 
self, and the purification of man by his blood. 

"It seems possible that the savage Thracians, in 
the fury of their worship on the mountains, when 
they were possessed by the god and became 'wild 
beasts,' actually tore with their teeth and hands any 
hares, goats, fawns, or the hke that they came across. 
There survives a constant tradition of inspired Bac- 
chanals in their miraculous strength tearing even bulls 



200 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

asunder — a feat, happily, beyond the bounds of hu- 
man possibility. The wild beast that tore was, of 
course, the savage god himself. And by one of these 
curious confusions of thought, which seem so incon- 
ceivable to us and so absolutely natural and obvious 
to primitive men, the beast torn was also the god! 
The Orphic congregations of later times, in their 
most holy gatherings, solemnly partook of the blood 
of a bull, which was, by a mystery, the blood of 
Dionysus Zagreus himself, the 'Bull of God,' slain 
in sacrifice for the purification of man. 



<r 



Tt is noteworthy, and throws much light on the 
spirit of Orphism, that, apart from this sacramental 
tasting of the blood, the Orphic worshipper held it an 
abomination to eat the flesh of animals at all. ... It 
fascinated him just because it was so incredibly primi- 
tive and uncanny; because it was a mystery which 
transcended reason!"^ 

Professor Murray seems to think it hard for a 
modern to contemplate the victim and the priest as 
in any sense one person, but orthodox religious people 
will experience no difficulty, as is evidenced by the 
line they are accustomed to sing: 

"Himself the Victim and Himself the Priest," 

which, it must be admitted, forms a curious parallel; 
though the meaning is simple and legitimate enough, 

1 Mr. L. P. Jacks has called my attention to an interesting article on a 
similar subject, by Dr. Farnell, in the Hibbert Journal. 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 201 

namely, that the sacrifice is voluntary: else, indeed 
were it mere execution. But a few strange hymns 
are more worthy of the worship of Dionysus, at least 
in some of its older and more primitive and purer 
forms, than of a place in a church-service (A. & M.) 
collection of to-day. These hymns emphasise, for 
the edification of the laity, the more barbarous con- 
comitants of sacrificial and vicarious redemption, by 
blood drawn from and pain inflicted on an innocent 
victim who is likewise a god. 

Sometimes the blood is represented as being used 
for cleansing purposes : 

"Oh, wash me in Thy precious blood." 

Sometimes it is described as a vivifying draught : 

"May those precious fountains 
Drink to thirsty souls afford;" 

but pagan precedents are closely followed, and pagan 
survival is clear. 

The idea of sacrificial suffering judicially self- 
inflicted by a widely vengeful Deity is an essential 
element in popular theology : 

"He, Who once in righteous vengeance 
Whelmed the world beneath the flood. 
Once again in mercy cleansed it 
With His own most precious Blood, 
Coming from His throne on high 
On the painful Cross to die. 

**We were sinners doomed to die; 
Jesus paid the penalty." 



202 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

It is more like a legal fiction or commercial transac- 
tion than a natural process. 

"Scourged with unrelenting fury 
For the sins which we deplore. 
By His livid stripes He heals us. 
Raising us to fall no more." 

"Had Jesus never bled and died. 
Then what could thee and all betide 
But uttermost damnation?" 

This sort of crude materiaHsm naturally; leads to a 
kind of idolatry: 

"Faithful Cross, above all other. 
One and only noble Tree, 
None in foliage, none in blossom. 
None in fruit thy peer may be; 
Sweetest wood, and sweetest iron; 
Sweetest weight is hung on thee. 

"Thou alone wast counted worthy 
This world's ransom to sustain. 
That a shipwrecked race for ever 
Might a port of refuge gain. 
With the sacred Blood anointed 
Of the Lamb for sinners slain." 

Suppose, however, that the behef in the efficacy 
of sacrifice is old, and that our form of it has a long 
ancestry which may be traced: that need not under- 
mine its essential truth; it will only mean that hu- 
manity had glimpses of truth earlier than the full 
revelation, and the familiar doctrine of "types" will 
be appealed to. 

In certain beliefs, such as that of immortality, I 
should myself allow the argument to have weight, 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 203 

and should not be unwilling to appeal to the antiquity; 
of human tradition as tending in favour of some sort 
of truth underlying this perennial and protean faith ; 
and so in the matter of vicarious punishment and 
bloody atonement by an innocent victim or by an in- 
carnate god for the sins of humanity, if we could 
feel a real and helpful truth underlying it, we might 
admit that the antiquity of the tradition was even in 
its favour. But it cannot be that all religious creeds, 
without exception, which are inherited from barbar- 
ous times have a true ethical significance: some of 
them must surely be mistaken, and it becomes a ques- 
tion which of them we may retain and which we must 
gradually seek to emancipate ourselves from. I 
would not be in the least dogmatic in such a matter, 
but surely it is generally recognised that although the 
sufferings and violent death of Christ were natural 
consequences of His birth so far in advance of His 
age, and although the pity and terror of such a 
ghastly tragedy has a purifying and sacramental in- 
fluence, yet we are now unable to detect in it anything 
of the nature of punishment; nor do we imagine for a 
moment that an angry God was appeased by it, and 
is consequently disposed to treat more lightly the sins 
of men here and now, or any otherwise than as they 
have always been treated by a constant, steadfast, per- 
severing Universe. 

Nor can we suppose that leaders of theologic 
thought are able to derive satisfaction from the more 
modern doctrine (perhaps, for all I know, a heresy) 
that it was not so much an infinite punishment as an 



204 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

infinite repentance that was efficacious; so that, ade- 
quate repentance having been achieved once for all 
long ago, sinners have nothiag further to do but to 
beUeve and acquiesce in it. 

As a matter of fact, the higher man of to-day is 
not worrying about his sins at all, still less about their 
punishment. His mission, if he is good for anything, 
is to be up and doing,^ and in so far as he acts 
wrongly or unwisely he expects to suffer. He may 
unconsciously plead for mitigation on the ground of 
good intentions,^ but never either consciously or un- 
consciously will anyone but a cur ask for the punish- 
ment to fall on someone else, nor rejoice if told that 
it already has so fallen. 

As for "original sin" or "birth sin" or other notion 
of that kind, by which is partly meant the sin of his 
parents, — ^that sits asbolutely hghtly on him. As a 
matter of fact it is non-existent, and no one but a 
monk could have invented it. Whatever it be it is 
not a business for which we are responsible. We did 
not make the world ; and an attempt to punish us for 
our animal origin and ancestry would be simply 
comic, if anyone could be found who was wiUing to 
take it seriously. 

Here we are; we have risen, as to our bodies, from 
the beasts ; as a race the struggle has been severe, and 
there have been both rises and falls. We have been 
helped now and again by bright and shining indi- 
vidual examples — ^true incarnations of diviner spirits 

iMatt. xxiv. 46, xii. 43. 2 Matt, xxv, 25, 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 205 

than our own, — notably by one supremely bright 
Spirit who blazed out nineteen hundred years ago, 
and was speedily murdered by the representatives of 
that class whose mission it appears to be to wage war 
against the prophets, and to do their worst to exter- 
minate new ideas and kinds of goodness to which they 
are not accustomed. Fortunately for the race, they 
are only able to kill the body ; the soul, the inspiration, 
the germ of a new and higher faith, seems for ever 
beyond their grasp. 

But now that orthodox people enthusiastically 
recognise his supreme goodness, they take steps to 
deny that he was effectively man, — only half man 
say some, only quarter man say others:^ human only 
on one side they feel he must have been, else he could 
not have been so good, so wise, so patient. So the 
hope of a higher humanity is to be taken from us, in 
order that man's sins may be superhumanly atoned for 
and an angry God illogically appeased. 

Well, well! demi-gods were common enough in 
those days. And again it may be said that the anti- 
quity of the belief is to its credit, and that these tales 
of the gods ^ were but crude heraldings of a divine 
truth some day to be made clear. 

But why, why, what is the good of it? Can a di- 
vine spirit not enter into a man born of two parents? 
Is divine inspiration to be limited to a being of ex- 

1 This is a reference to the doctrine concerning the supposed origin 
of the Virgin. 

2 Familiar to the Jews during their Babylonian captivity and the 
Roman conquest. 



206 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

ceptional parentage? If we grant that it is a physi- 
ological condition towards or at which the race should 
aim, — if we suppose that some day we shall have 
one parent only, and that that is to be our apotheosis, 
— there would be meaning in it. In that case Christ 
would indeed be the first-fruits, and would repre- 
sent some unknown possibility in our physical na- 
ture. But do people think that? And if not, 
what is the virtue of semi-parentage? If for a Di- 
vine Incarnation we admit human parentage at all, 
we may as well admit it altogether. If a taint is 
conveyed by inheritance from or dependence on hu- 
man flesh — grossly built up by daily food of terres- 
trial materials and grossly cleared of refuse — that 
taint appertains not to fatherhood only, but to mother- 
hood also; and the only way to avoid the imaginary 
stain is to postulate a being sprung like Pallas from 
the brain of Zeus — a pure embodiment of thought, a 
true psychological "conception." That Christ pos- 
sessed a divine spirit in excess, to an extent unknown 
to us — ^that he was an embodiment of truly Divine 
attributes,^ which as thus revealed we worship — ^may 
be willingly admitted; that he represents a standard 
or peak towards which humanity may try to aim, is a 
tenable and helpful creed; but that his body was ab- 
normally produced, even if it be the fact, seems to 
give no assistance. I derive no sort of comfort or 
intellectual aid from an idea of that kind. 

For what is virgin birth? merely a case of par- 

1 John xvi. 2S, xvii. 4. 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 207, 

thenogenesls. It has been asserted perhaps errone- 
ously, that X-rays have the power to produce parthe- 
nogenetic development in some lowly kinds of ova.^ 
It is doubtless thinkable enough. I would not say it 
is impossible, but that it is ethically useless. The 
lowest organisms multiply by fission, sexual reproduc- 
tion comes in later as an improved form; but it comes 
in very low down — as low down as the higher plants 
— and exists throughout the main animal kingdom. 
Possibly at some other stage, or by some other pro- 
cess, it may be dispensed with. If so, it will be a bi- 
ological fact of scientific interest, and, if ever applic- 
able to man, a development of astounding social sig- 
nificance, but nothing more. There is no virtue in 
multiplication by fission, any more than there is 
vice in multiplication by sex. Both are superla- 
tively interesting facts, like many other facts of 
science, and no one can say that we understand the 
extraordinary truth that a gentle warmth applied for 
a certain time to a sparrow's egg will result in a live 
creature breaking forth, which had not existed before, 
endowed with power to live and feel and grow and 
propagate his kind to the third and fourth thousandth 
generation. For some reason — a wise and good 
social reason — mankind, living in a crowded state, has 
surrounded the multiplication process with ritual and 
emotion and fear. No doubt this is absolutely justi- 
fiable and right, and, by experience, necessary; but it 
may in some cases have gone too far ; and it seems to 

^British Medical Journal, 13th February 1904, p. 383. 



208 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

me to go too far when it denies that a divine spirit 
can enter into any body except one that has been pro- 
duced in an exceptional way. Whatever the mys- 
terious phrase "Son of God" means, and it probably 
means something mighty and true, it cannot mean 
that. A belief in that is materialism run rampant. 

And yet even materiahsm need not be a term of 
abuse ; for if matter be the living garment of God, — 
as it certainly is the temporary raiment of man, — and 
if the Divine Spirit be immanent in everything that 
exists, I do not say that a glorified materiahsm may 
not enshrine some elements of truth, when properly 
understood; nor would I seek to deny the benefit of 
Sacraments, in spite of their curiously material char- 
acter. But the vicarious expiation, the judicial pun- 
ishment of the innocent, and the appeasement of an 
angry God, are surely now recognisable as savage in- 
ventions ; though they have left their traces on surviv- 
ing formulae, which accordingly have to be explained 
away. And so hkewise the superior virtue of a one- 
sided human origin, for any Redeemer or Exemplar 
of mankind, seems to me unworthy of a period of 
spiritual awakening, of a cleansing acceptance of the 
facts of nature, of a purification of the material uni- 
verse by the recognised permeance of an immanent 
energising God, of whom we too are fragmentary, 
struggling, helpful portions. 

II 

What, then, are the Truths underlying the great 
mysteries connected with the appearance and work 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 209 

of Christ? Here I approach the positive part of my 
task, entering a region already flooded with Kterature ; 
yet must I not shrink from an attempt to supplement 
negative criticism by such provisional and tentative 
positive judgment as I have been able to form, from 
the scientific point of view — ^the only kind of judg- 
ment to which I am entitled, — concerning the under- 
lying Realities. No justification of this course 
should be necessary, because a fine jewel only flashes 
the brighter when turned about so as to expose every 
facet to the light; so I proceed without hesitation, 
though as briefly as is consistent with intelligibility, 
to set them down: 

1. Incarnation with Pre-existence. 

2. Revelation or Discovery. 

3. Continuity and persistent Influence. 

The utterance of science on these heads is not loud 
and is not positive, but I claim that at least it is not 
negative. No science asserts that our personality will 
cease a quarter of a century hence, nor does any 
science assert that it began half a century ago. 
Spiritual existence "before all worlds" is a legitimate 
creed. 

No science maintains that the whole of our person- 
ality is incarnate here and now: it is in fact beginning 
to surmise the contrary, and to suspect the existence 
of a larger transcendental individuality, with wljich 
men of genius are in touch more than ordinary men. 
We may be all partial incarnations of a larger 
3elf. Incarnation of a portion of a divine spirit 
therefore involves no scientific dislocation or contra- 



210 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

diction, nor need it involve any material mechanism 
other than that to which we are accustomed/ For 
only the germ is derived from others; the body is 
built under the guidance of the indwelhng, living, 
personal entity : it is adapted to and serves to display 
the features of that entity under the limitations and 
disabilities of a material aspect; as the epiphany of 
an artist's conception is restrained by the limitations 
of his medium, as well as by his lack of executive skill. 

Granting, then, the advent of as lofty a Spirit as 
we can conceive, — perfectly human on the bodily side, 
with all that that implies, and perfectly Divine on the 
spiritual side, whatever that may mean, — what sort 
of result may be expected to follow? 

Consider the position. Here is mankind, risen 
from the beasts, making gods in the Ukeness of its 
ancestors, — in something worse than its own likeness, 
— cruel, jealous, bloody gods, who order massacres 
of helpless non-combatants and cattle, the courts of 
whose temples and tabernacles are a shambles served 
by a greedy self-seeking priesthood and by profess- 
ional reHgious people who play to a gallery.^ Into 
such a world, that is to say, a world with these general 
characteristics, in spite of occasional bursts of bright- 
ness and much homely virtue, imagine the thorough 
incarnation of a truly Divine Spirit, and what would 
be the consequences? 

The immediate consequences we know. On the 
part of the priests hostility and murder^ on the part 

1 John i. 12-14; 1 John iii. 2, 

2 Matt, xxiii. 5. 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 211 

of peasantry, curiosity growing into sympatHy ; on the 
part of a few earnest souls love and adoration. But 
what in the long-run would be the permanent conse- 
quences? Surely a discovery of the truer nature of 
God : one of the veils would be drawn aside from the 
face of Deity, and there would partially emerge, not 
Jehovah any more than Baal, but a Being whom it 
was possible to love, to serve, to worship ; for whom it 
is possible to live and work, and, if need be, die. 
There would be the beginnings of a real at-one-ment 
between man and God.^ 

Observe that the influence exerted is exerted wholly 
on man. The attitude of God has changed no whit; 
there never was any hostihty to be washed out in 
blood; He had felt no stupid wrath at the blind ef- 
forts, the risings and sinkings of men struggling in 
the mire from bestial to human attributes; there was 
nothing to appease. But there was plenty to reveal: 
an infinitude of compassion, an ideal of righteousness, 
the inevitableness of law, the hopelessness of rebel- 
lion,^ the power of faith, the quenching of supersti- 
tious fear in filial love ; a real and not a mechanical sal- 
vation, no legal quibble but a deep eternal truth. Let 
man but see the face of God, so far as it can be re- 
vealed in the flesh, and he will catch a glimpse of a 
Holy of Hohes such as he had not conceived. The 
savage inventions of a jealous God who resents the 
worship of anything but himself, who thinks more of 
his own glory and dignity than of the creative work 

1 John xiv. 7; Mark xv. 38. 2 John xvi. 8. 



212 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

of evolution, who arranges that if people do not theor- 
ise correctly here and now then they shall suffer eter- 
nal pain — all these ignorances fall into the region of 
blasphemous fables, henceforth to be promulgated 
by fanatics alone. 

And yet let us be fair. The worship of Jehovah 
was based on a recognition of the majesty and sa- 
credness of Law; an element nevermore to be de- 
stroyed. And as to punishment for wrong behef, — 
the notion of an eternal penalty attaching to discord- 
ance or dislocation between ourselves and the Universe 
of which we are a part is a true and luminous idea. 
When our beliefs are out of harmony with facts, when 
our theories are false, we are liable to act erroneously, 
and accordingly to suffer by conflict with inevitable 
law, even though we act in accordance with our faith, 
and so are not consciously wicked or infidel. The 
connexion between true theory and right action is real 
and close, although very Ukely the commonest faults 
of men are due less to wrong notions than to weak 
wills; but the sins due to wrong theory are liable to 
be much more really deadly^; there is no wickedness 
so violent as that organised by the fanatic who thinks 
he is doing God service, nor is there any harm worse 
than can follow the footsteps of a well-meaning bla- 
tant fool. And the penalty is in a sense eternal, that 
is to say seonic,^ for it is incurable except by mental 

1 Matt, xxiii. 30, 34. 

2 There seems to be a popular idea abroad that the derivation of the 
word eternal signifies without end — I suppose from e and terminus — 
and that the word aeonic is milder. But in truth they mean just the 
same; only one is the Latin and the other the Greek form. The sup- 
posed popular derivation is a false one. 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 213 

and spiritual revolution. So long as wrong beliefs 
continue, so long there must be a sense of dislocation, 
a feeling of friction and of grit: the only remedy is 
to get right with the Universe. The sin and the dam- 
nation are co-eternal or co-seonal. 

The law thus stated is no theologic dogma, it re- 
sults from no arbitrary fiat^ it is the commonplace ex- 
pression of a natural fact. It is exemplified in the 
running of every piece of human machinery, and in 
the working of our own bodies. Anything out of 
gear is a source of disquiet, of inefficiency, and of 
pain; health and happiness result from a restoration 
of harmony. 

How the grit got into the cosmic organism may be 
a hard question; perhaps it has never yet been out. 
This may be a narrow, temporal way of conceiving 
the matter — ^but let it pass for the present. Anyhow 
we could not have become what we are without it; 
and the word "grit" has acquired a forcible psychic 
connotation. After all, grit is only matter out of 
place ; it has no intrinsic or absolute quality. Whether 
it exists for good or for ill, we did not put it there; 
though it is our privilege to help to remove it. We 
are the artisans of creation, at least in this outlying 
planetary district, and a magnificent co-operation is 
our highest privilege.^ 

Almost every widespread doctrine has a meaning 
and enshrines a truth, visible when freed from its 
blasphemous accretions; and the doctrine of seonic 

1 John V. 17. 



214 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

damnation, even as too specifically interpreted by 
Athanasius, is a glimpse of the truth that whosoever 
will enter into the joy of the Lord must endeavour to 
understand rightly the cosmic scheme,^ and that ex- 
cept a man get into harmony with Truth and Reality 
he cannot ascend to the destiny in store for him — He 
cannot be "saved." 

In the same way a germ of truth can be detected in 
that persistent element of popular theology, the idea 
of sacrificial suffering, self-inflicted. There must be 
such a germ, else the behef could not have proved 
itself of such "saving" power; — and even the current 
crudities of expression may have had their use, in the 
recent transitional age of the earth's history — the geo- 
logical epoch during which the evolution of man has 
been beginning — that uneducated age out of which 
we cannot yet be said to have emerged. The essence 
of truth contained in it would appear to be that the 
responsible task of evolution from animal to higher 
man, the struggle humanam condere gentem^ could 
not be xmdertaken and carried through even by Deity 
without grievous suffering and agonising patience ^ ; 
and this sympathetic shudder through the whole of 
Existence might well be parabolically expressed in 
terms of current altruistic sacrificial legend. Subject 
to proper interpretation, the legend has a meaning: 
the mistake lay in imagining it an expiatory transac- 
tion, instead of a natural and necessary process, quite 
unlike the alternate moods of fury and affection some- 
times exhibited by a chief to slaves. 

1 Matt. xxii. H. 2 Rom. viii. 29. 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 215 

It was not a hare necessary and natural process, 
however ; the aspects of Deity are so infinite that they 
cannot be grasped simultaneously. The personal as- 
pect is as vivid as any of the others^ and, from this 
point of view, the genuineness of Divine suffering, 
no matter how inevitable,^ has always been recognised 
as a revelation of Divine and Fatherly love. 

The redeeming and elevating efficacy of such a 
conviction is manifest. The perception of something 
in the Universe which not only makes for righteous- 
ness, but which loves and sympathises in the process; 
and yet is no mere indiscriminate charity, weakly re- 
lieving man from the consequences of his blunders or 
stealthily undermining his powers of self-help, but 
a true benevolence, which healthily and strongly and 
if need be sternly convinces him that the path of duty 
is the path of joy,^ that sacrifice and not selfishness 
is the road to the heights of existence,^ that it is far 
better to suffer wrong than to do wrong :^ — such a per- 
ception inevitably raises man far above "the yelp of 
the beast," "saves" him, saves him truly, from aeons 
of degradation, and enables him to "stand on the 
heights of his life with a glimpse of a height that is 
higher." 

Selfishness long continued must lead to isolation 
and so to a sort of practical extinction:^ it is like a 

1 See Chapter II. § iv. above. 

2 Luke XV. 4. 

3 Matt. XXV. 21, 30. 

4 Matt. xvi. 25 ; John xii. 32. 

5 Plato, Gorgias 469, conversation with Polus ; and elsewhere. 

6 Cecilia de Noel, by Lanoe Falconer. 



216 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

disintegrating or repulsive force in the material 
cosmos, while love is like a cohesive and constructive 
force. All this is no new doctrine, thank goodness ! it 
has been preached and practised by the prophets and 
saints of the human race for generations — by some 
mighty ones even before the advent of Jesus of Naz- 
areth. For that love is the quickening force of the 
spiritual universe, and that its fruition would lead to 
super-humanity, had been clearly stated before it was 
in the Fourth Gospel supremely emphasised; and the 
words put by the Socrates of Plato into the mouth 
of Diotima the prophetess of Mantineia ^ have a deep 
and growing meaning for those who have ears to 
hear. 

A discovery once made by the human race is perma- 
nent: it fades no more, and its influence grows from 
age to age. We are now beginning to realise a fur- 
ther stage in the process of atonement ; we are rising 
to the conviction that we are a part of nature, and so 
a part of God; that the whole creation — the One and 
the Many and All-One — is travailing together 
towards some great end; and that now, after ages of 
development, we have at length become conscious por- 
tions of the great scheme, and can co-operate in it 
with knowledge and with joy. We are no aliens in a 
stranger universe governed by an outside God ; we are 
parts of a developing whole, all enfolded in an em- 
bracing and interpenetrating love, of which we too, 
each to other, sometimes experience the joy too deep 

1 Symposium, 191-212. Best translation in Myers* Human Personality, 
vol. i. p. 113. 



CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE 217 

for words. And this strengthening vision, this sense 
of union with Divinity, this, and not anything artifi- 
cial or legal or commercial, is what science will some 
day tell us is the inner meaning of the Redemption of 
Man. 



CHAPTER XI 
SIN, SUFFERING AND WRATH 

IN the last chapter certain great topics were dealt 
with so briefly that if left without amplification 
they may give rise to misunderstanding ; indeed their 
treatment has already aroused some criticism, notably 
an extremely friendly commient by Dr. Talbot, now 
Bishop of Southwark, published in the Hibbert Jour- 
nal j wherein, while criticising judicially, he neverthe- 
less holds out a hand of welcome. 

This article was replied to sufficiently in the suc- 
ceeding number of the Hibbert Journal, and not 
much of my reply need be here reproduced. 

I will only say that whereas in the greater part of 
the present book, and indeed of my writings gener- 
ally, the mode of treatment aims at being positive 
rather than negative — seeking to construct rather 
than to destroy, and hoping to replace error quietly 
by substitution of truth — ^the last chapter does 
to some extent take a negative or destructive attitude 
and accordingly demands extremely careful treat- 
ment. 

I do not conceive of myself, however, as attacking 
Theology or Theological doctrine: I discern an ele- 
ment of truth in nearly every doctrine, perhaps in 
quite every doctrine which the human race has been 

218 



SIN, SUFFERING AND WRATH 219 

able to believe for a long period ; but I am seeking to 
scrutinise more closely, and if possible display to 
greater advantage, that side of those doctrines which 
faces us across the frontier of our scientific territory. 
This side has been less efficiently attended to by the 
builders than the fa9ade devoted to edification; and 
some or our own outworks approach so near to the 
Theological position on its more prosaic side, that an 
occasional raid, inspired by admiration and conducted 
with reverence, may be pardoned. 

It looks to me as if part of the building were need- 
lessly obscured by coatings and stucco and excres- 
cences, once thought ornamental. Perhaps this ex- 
traneous matter had the useful effect of protecting 
the building through times of ignorance and violence, 
but some of it is now seen to be little better than dis- 
figurement and crudity, hiding the beautiful structure 
beneath; it was this extraneous matter alone that I 
intended to attack in my last chapter. 

But in this legitimate restoration work at the pres- 
ent day a number of operatives are engaged; some 
doing their occasional best from outside, Uke myself, 
others, as regular workmen acting from within, Uke 
Dr. Talbot. With his scheme of the structure, as 
seen from his point of view and stated in the Hib- 
bert Journal^ I have extremely little cause to dis- 
agree. He is one of the many whom I referred to as 
having already emancipated themselves from errors 
of the past to a large extent; and if it still seems to 
me that here and there in his statement traces of 
crudeness remain, who am I that I should suppose 



220 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

myself capable of infallibly detecting and evaluating 
all forms of crudity? 

I notice that Professor Masterman admits the 
crudity of ordinary statements of Christian doctrine, 
but justifies it as necessary to catch the attention of 
ignorant laymen, who are accustomed to speak in 
terms of "blood." I think it possible for the clergy 
to over-estimate - the crudity and ignorance of the 
laity. A professional jargon is apt to be employed 
which by habit may sound appropriate on Sundays, 
but does not represent the mental attitude of anyone 
at other times. Perhaps spirit and character once re- 
sided in the blood, as compassion in the bowels, viru- 
lence in the spleen, love in the heart, and other emo- 
tions in other viscera, but few persons imagine that 
they live there now. I say nothing against the meth- 
ods of the Salvation Army in its own sphere of ac- 
tivity: these may be justified by their results. I 
somewhat doubt whether ordinary Church procedure 
is so justified. 

I suggest that it is not wise to assume too invinci- 
ble an ignorance on the part of habitual worshippers. 
It may, for instance, be of doubtful wisdom to with- 
draw documents from common use on this ground 
alone, and at the same time to suggest that neverthe- 
less they convey essential truth to clerics instructed 
in refinements of interpretation; it is rather too sug- 
gestive of the attitude of the priests in John vii. 49. 
The really learned in theology are respected by all, 
but they are infrequently encountered. It would be 
fairer to admit that some of the documents in use 



SIN, SUFFERING AND WRATH 221 

are themselves imperfect and antiquated, that they 
have been in many respects outgrown, and that truth 
as now perceived can now be more clearly expressed. 
But I refrain from any more ecclesiastical sugges- 
tions. 

Perhaps, however, I may unobtrusively remark 
that such expressions as righteous vengeance, angry 
Father, wrathful Lamb, do not seem satisfactory 
forms whereby to represent what the Bishop well calls 
"a stately and austere conception of order." Nor is 
it likely that "the bright front and buoyant tread of 
early discipleship" arose from anything so negative as 
sin overcome: it was not that which animated the 
Apostles; and though it certainly contributed to the 
inspiration of the Magdalene, we should hardly speak 
of * 'bright front and buoyant tread" in her case. 

Something more positive is needed to explain any 
living and energising enthusiasm. The incidental 
treatment of sin in Chapter X. is, however, one of the 
points on which further explanation is certainly de- 
sirable; and all the supplementary points I now pro- 
pose to deal with may be grouped under four heads 
as follows: 

1. That evolutionary treatment of sin is apt to 
minimise unduly the sense of sinfulness. 

2. That it is misleading to deny the revealed Wrath 
of the Holy One against sin. 

3. That heresy lurks in any non-professional treat- 
ment of the relation between the Humanity and Di- 
vinity of Christ. 



222 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

4. That while controverting the notion of vicarious 
punishment, the true significance of the doctrine of a 
vicarious Atonement may be missed. 

Let us take these points in order. 

1. On page 204 above the following sentence oc- 
curs: 

"As a matter of fact the higher man of to-day is 
not worrying about his sins at all, still less about their 
punishment: his mission if he is good for anything, 
is to be up and doing." 

When writing these words I was well aware that 
they laid me open to a retort based upon John ix. 41 ; 
nevertheless the statement seems to me true "as a mat- 
ter of fact," provided by "higher men" are under- 
stood leaders in the world's activity, whether they are 
working in the public eye or in the study or in the 
office, or anywhere save in the cloister. Perhaps when 
so put it will be granted, merely as a matter of fact, 
if saints are excluded, and if no moral judgment in 
favour of the thesis is claimed or supposed to be in- 
volved in the statement. But it will be contended that 
more than a matter of fact was implied in that sen- 
tence, that there was an element of judgment also, 
and that it was one of approbation: that the epithet 
"higher" signified that a man who was up and doing, 
instead of introspecting and mourning over his sins, 
was in the path of progress, and was to be praised 
rather than blamed. Undoubtedly I did mean that 
too; and in order implicitly to justify that attitude, 
without presumption and without tedious contention. 



SIN, SUFFERING AND WRATH 223 

I gave two Biblical references — one to Matt. xxiv. 
46, where the "servant who is found so doing" is au- 
thoritatively "blessed," and the other to the warning 
contained in Matt. xii. 43, that apologue about the 
fate of a house which was left unoccupied after hav- 
ing been cleansed and decorated. 

It may surely without unorthodoxy be held that 
there are two ways of overcoming sin and sinful tend- 
encies : one the direct way, of concentrating attention 
on them with brooding and lamentation ; the other the 
indirect and, as I think, the safer and more efficacious 
and altogether more profitable way, of putting in so 
many hours' work per day, and of excluding weeds 
from the garden by energetic cultivation of healthy 
plants. 

It will be said that brooding and lamentation is not 
a fit description of the exercises of religion, that a 
safeguard of a higher order than any terrestrial oc- 
cupation can be secured by conscious emotional peni- 
tence and aspiration. It may be so ; but it is not quite 
certain. The following sonnet may or may not be 
good poetry, but it would appear to embody, in ex- 
aggerated and feminine form, a phase of experience 
not unfamiliar to the ordinary human soul : 

"A soul of many longings entered late 

A chapel like a jewel blazing bright. 

And fell upon the altar steps. All night 
She held with hopes and agonies debate; 
With tears the litanies love-passionate 

Drenched her; triumphant colours burned her white; 

And, as the incense flamed in silver light, 
God sealed her to His own novitiate. 



224, SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

"And then, because her eyes were charmed with peace. 
And blinded by the stars new-born within 

The lit sweet lids God's dreams had lover^d, — 
Nine paces from that House of Ecstasies 
Her feet were taken in the snares of sin; 

And, ere the morning quickened, she was dead." i 

We must all of us have known what it is to be com- 
pelled to say, not always, nor often, it is to be hoped, 
— ^it is as stupid to exaggerate in these as in any other 
matters, — but occasionally in the course of our lives, 
or even constantly in connexion with some minor in- 
grained habit which we should hke to overcome, 

"Video meliora, proboque, 
-Deteriora sequor." 

And this doing not what we see to be best, but some- 
thing inferior which we do not really approve or will 
to do, is what constitutes one aspect of sin. Plato, 
indeed, argues in the Gorgias that a wicked man is 
not really obeying his own will, that he is enslaved and 
acting contrary to his true self; but whether that be 
so or not, few of us have the spirit to be wilful sin- 
ners. Wilful sin is, as has been often said, rebellion 
and lawlessness, the misuse and misapplication of nat- 
ural powers; it is akin to dirt, to disease, to weeds — 
ix, to matter and cells and plants out of place, and 
working harm instead of good. It is like a fire es- 
caped from control and consuming instead of serving. 
Even so a banked-up lake constructed for the water- 
supply of a city, if it burst its embankment, may 
whelm villages in flood. 

1 One of Rachael Annand Taylor's poems, called "The Vanity of 
Vows," quoted in the Times Literary Supplement for 15th April 1904. 



SIN, SUFFERING AND WRATH 225 

Our business is to restrain and control, to direct and 
guide, the forces of nature and our own forces. The 
man of vigorous sin, rightly trained and directed, may 
become the man of wholesome energy. There is some 
valuable material being wasted in our prisons: unre- 
claimed soil festering for lack of plough and harrow. 
Good men of small and restrained activity may not 
constitute the most efficient or the most approved in- 
struments of progress. The ascetic may endeavour 
to avoid all danger, by never making a mountain lake, 
by never hghting a fire, by never going to sea, by run- 
ning no risks and living a poverty-stricken existence; 
and may succumb after all: as soldiers may be econo- 
mised in war till they fall victims to some miserably 
ignominious disease. We are called upon rather for 
full exercise of all our powers, for full vigour of life, 
but subject to discipline and reason and restraint. 
What we call vices and virtues are compounded of 
very similar vital forces : their character is dependent 
on the direction we give them. Every activity can be 
deflected from the vicious into the virtuous direction; 
and an unsought joy is the reward. 

While dealing with these everyday considerations, 
it is desirable to avoid misconception by explicitly 
making the admission that doubtless there is a sense in 
which radical imperfection can be predicated of the 
whole human race without exception: the sense in 
which the heavens' can be said to be unclean and the 
angels to be chargeable with folly; the sense in which 
Job, though able to rebut the charge of hidden wick- 



226 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

edness brought by his friends, was wiUing abundantly 
to admit vileness when accosted by the Deity. 

For devotional purposes this comparison of human- 
ity with infinite Perfection and infinite attributes gen- 
erally may be appropriate and useful, though no finite 
emendation can be effective against it ; one would ex- 
pect the feeling aroused by contemplation of Infini- 
tude to be one of humility and abasement rather than 
one of contrition and penitence, but I admit that saints 
have found it otherwise, and that their experience is 
conclusive. 

2. So much for practical and human considerations ; 
but there is another and more important matter, on 
which explanation is needed, namely, where I con- 
tend that the sacrifice of Christ need not be regarded 
as expiatory, or as appeasing the righteous anger of 
a wrathful God, because (p. 211) . — 

"He had felt no wrath at the blind efforts, the ris- 
ings and sinkings, of men strugghng in the mire from 
bestial to human attributes — ^there was nothing to ap- 
pease." 

This has been attacked as unscriptural: "Angry 
with the wicked every day," "The wrath of the 
Lamb," and a multitude of famiUar texts, can easily 
be quoted. 

Very well, the epithet "unscriptural" has no coer- 
cive force unless the text appealed to carries with it a 
conviction of its own inspiration. There is plenty of 
"anger" in the Old Testament undoubtedly, but that 
is just where one would expect to find it on the sur- 



SIN, SUFFERING AND WRATH 227 

vival hypothesis; and I doubt not the Prophets had 
plenty to make them angry/ 

But it is scarcely worth while to waste time in dis- 
cussing the relative authority of texts : every one must 
be aware that this is no rose-water world; the things 
that have happened in it, and the things that may yet 
happen in it, are appalling. We must admit the force 
of experiences which gave birth to ejaculations such 
as Luke xii. 5 and Hebrews x. 31, whoever may have 
been their author, and I am glad of the opportunity 
of enlarging upon this subject of sin and Divine 
anger somewhat; it was quite too briefly and super- 
ficially treated in Chapter X. : indeed it was not really 
dealt with at all. 

It suited the priests to say that God was angry 
when a budding nation desired to have a king in order 
to weld it together. It suited them to say that he was 
angry when prisoners were taken captive instead of 

1 Of the two texts above quoted at random the first is from Psalm 
vii. 11, and the words "with the wicked" seem to be a gratuitous in- 
terpolation of the translators, an evident attempt to make intelligible 
the supposed sentence, "God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry 
every day." The Prayer Book version — more effective as usual — ren- 
ders it thus, "God is a righteous Judge, strong and patient, and God 
is provoked every day"; which is doubtless as true as any statement of 
the kind can be. 

"The wrath of the Lamb" occurs only in Revelation, so far as I 
know; and there also is to be found that hyperbole, intensified from 
Isaiah and from a common industry of the country, about the vintage 
of blood flowing "to the horse-bridles" from the trodden winepress of 
the wrath of God. The author's feelings are evidently overcharged. 
And if we had lived in times of really efficient persecution we too 
might have tried, less poetically, to assuage our indignant helplessness in 
the same sort of way. 



228 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

being massacred; and again that he was wroth when 
the first census was contemplated. 

So also in rather later times God was represented 
as angry with idolaters, not ostensibly because some 
special practices of idol-worship may have been de- 
basing, but because he was "jealous." There are 
plenty of good reasons against idolatry among intelli- 
gent and "chosen" people, but this is not one of them: 
nor is it to be supposed that the stock of a tree is ever 
really worshipped, even when prostrated to. An idol, 
to ignorant and undeveloped people, is a symbol of 
something which they are really worshipping under a 
material form and embodiment: the sensuous pre- 
sentation assists their infantile efforts towards ab- 
stract thought, as material sacraments help people in 
a higher stage of religious development. But some 
of these helps should be outgrown. An adult mathe- 
matician hardly needs a geometrical figure, crudely 
composed of fragments of chalk or smears of plum- 
bago or ink, to help him to reason; and if he uses 
such a diagram he is aware that he is not really at- 
tending to it, but is reasoning about ideal and unreal- 
isable perfections; he has soared above the symbol, 
and is away among the cementing laws of the uni- 
verse. 

If an image or a tree-trunk or other symbol helps a 
savage to meditate on some divine and intractable con- 
ception, if it has been so used by thousands of his an- 
cestors, and has acquired a halo of reverence through 
antiquity and by the accumulation of human emotion 
lavished upon it, — a missionary should think twice 



SIN, SUFFERING AND WRATH 229 

before he is rude to it, or abuses it or pulls it down. 
We do not rebuke a child for lavishing a wealth of 
nascent maternal affection on some grotesque black- 
Betty of a wooden rag-covered doll; we do not de- 
spise, we honour, a regiment content to be decimated 
so it may save its flag, — ^which materially is almost a 
nonentity. And so if we send missionaries, we should 
send competent men, who will gradually educate by 
implanting useful arts and positive virtues; and we 
should tell these messengers clearly that negative and 
iconoclastic teaching may be very cruel. 

These things depend upon grade attained. It was 
very right for Hebrew prophets to feel indignant and 
to wax sarcastic when they saw the degenerate wor- 
ship of a moderately enlightened people descending 
to the level of a grinning idol or the stock of a tree ; 
and they may have rightly felt that to replace such 
symbols as these by the more advanced symbol of an 
angry and jealous God would be a spiritual help of 
the highest kind possible to a nation at such a stage 
of ethical development. In this manner the texts con- 
cerning anger and jealousy can be amply accounted 
for. 

Moreover, like most other symboUsm, they embody 
a real truth. Quite irrespective of texts in its favour, 
we may be wilKng to recognise Divine wrath as a real 
and terrible thing; though we must also be ready to 
admit that the gloom of religions antecedent to Chris- 
tianity, and its own later struggle amid nascent civili- 
sation, overshadowed the Gospel message unduly; 
and fear was a powerful weapon in the hands of 



230 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

priests, which they did not fail to employ. But I feel 
no contradiction between all this and the above quota- 
tion from page 211. So far as I can judge, it is 
not likely that a Deity operating through a process 
of evolution can feel wrath at the blind efforts of his 
creatures struggling upward in the mire. I judge 
rather that the human impulse to lend them a pitiful 
and helpful hand can with difficulty be restrained, can 
indeed only be restrained by lofty and far-seeing Wis- 
dom, and by perception of "the far-off interest of 
tears." 

Nevertheless, I am sure that what may without ir- 
reverence be humanly spoken of as fierce Wrath 
against sin, and even against a certain class of sinner, 
is a Divine attribute. But, then, what do we mean by 
"sin" in this connection? It is a term which, in a dif- 
ferent sense from charity, Hkewise covers a multitude. 
I do not wish to enter upon a dissertation on the na- 
ture of sin in general from the scientific standpoint. 
For our present purpose we can regard the matter 
quite simply, as something of which we have all plenty 
of experience ; but I maintain that when we are speak- 
ing of the sin against which God's anger blazes, we 
do not mean the sins of failure, the burden of remorse, 
the acts which cause contrition and penitence on the 
part of a saint or a child or a labouring man — a 
labouring man or woman of any class ; we mean some- 
thing quite other than that. And I assume that 
therein we are consistent with the doctrines of the 
Church. 

If not a wicked absurdity, it is surely a libel to as- 



SIN, SUFFERING AND WRATH 231 

sert that God is angry with ordinary human f aihngs, 
and with the dismal lapses from virtue of poor out- 
easts of civilisation. We are familiar, for instance, 
with the fierce wrath of Christ, — his language was 
denunciatory in the extreme : but against what sort of 
people? It was not the pubhcans and the harlots 
whom he stigmatised as a generation of vipers, or 
whom he threatened with the damnation of hell; 
rather it was some specimens of the unco' guid of that 
day — ^people perfectly satisfied with themselves, peo- 
ple ready to forbid deeds of healing on the Sabbath, 
and eager to stifle the holiest if they had the chance ^ 
— ^it was with these that he was angry, not with any- 
one who could be described as helplessly and ineffi- 
ciently strugghng out of the mire towards better 
things. 

There were sins of which he was genuinely 
ashamed, so that he stooped and wrote upon the 
ground when they were suddenly obtruded upon his 
notice by coarse experimenters: shame so acute that 
even those ruffians had the grace subsequently to slink 
away; but it was stoning of the Prophets, wilful 
blindness to the Highest, it was blasphemy against 
the Holy Ghost, that excited his fiercest reprobation. 

Just as it is impossible for the human race at any 
given time to select that one of their number who will 
be best remembered a thousand years hence, so it is 
difficult for us to judge what class of people are rend- 
ering themselves most hable to high Displeasure now. 

1 Mark iii. 5, 6, 29. 



232 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

I suppose that the respectable and religious world of 
Judsea was genuinely astonished, and not a little scan- 
dalised, at its vigorous denunciation by an itinerant 
Preacher, long ago; and it is just possible that to-day 
those self-satisfied people who shut their eyes to truth, 
and propagate error, are at least as harmful to the 
general advance as are some individuals whom Society 
for its own safety finds it necessary to keep in seclu- 
sion/ 

A Church which, let us say, excommunicates Tol- 
stoi may possibly be composed of pious individuals 
w^hom it does not become us to judge, but I can con- 
ceive that in its corporate capacity any Church which 
opposes reform, which persistently takes the wrong 
side, which sustains abuses such as the droits de seig- 
neur in the past, and perhaps other only less flagrant 
abuses to-day, may be regarded as deserving of vig- 
orous Denunciation; and if such an institution, in 
some neighbouring country or elsewhere, should hap- 
pen to fall upon evil days, it may find itself unsuc- 
cessful in its endeavour to fasten the blame upon any- 
thing but itself. 

There are many grades of sin; and anyone may 
know the kind of sin which excites the anger of God, 
by bethinking him of the kind which arouses his own 

1 And, incidentally, may it not be also possible that the omission on 
the part of Society to make any serious and satisfactory effort to train 
and humanise and redeem those whom it thus takes under its providential 
control (not to mention their subjection to the inhuman device of solitary 
confinement) is liable to be regarded in High Quarters as deserving of 
reprobation just as severe as that accorded to any more actively com- 
mitted crime? 



SIN, SUFFERING AND WRATH 233 

best and most righteous anger. I can imagine that 
the infernal proceedings of Nero and of the Holy- 
Inquisition were repugnant and nauseating to the 
Universe to a degree which was almost unbearable. 
The fierce indignation that would blaze out if one 
were maliciously to torture a child or an animal in view 
of an ordinary man or woman, would surely be a 
spark of the Divine wrath ; and we have been told that 
a millstone round the neck of a child-abuser is too 
light a penalty. 

Sins of this kind are a boil, an abscess, on the Uni- 
verse : they must be attacked and cured by human co- 
operators, they are hardly tractable otherwise; ^ just 
as in the complex aggregate of cells we call our body 
the dominant intelligence cannot unaided cope with 
its own disease, but must depend on the labours of its 
micro-organisms, the phagocytes, which swarm to any 
poisoned plague spot, and there actively and painfully 
struggle with and inflame and attack the evil, till one 
side or other is overcome: so it is with man as an 
active ingredient in the universe. We are the white 
corpuscles of the cosmos: and like the corpuscles we 
are an essential ingredient of the system, our full po- 
tentiality being latent until stimulated into activity 
by disease. 

If it is possible for a man at times to feel a sort of 
hatred and anger against his own weaker and worser 
self, so I can imagine a God feeling what may be 
imperfectly spoken of as disgust and wrath at de- 

1 Psalm cxv. 16. 



234 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY, 

fects which still exist in his Universe — ^in Himself, 
dare we say? — defects for which in a manner he is in 
some sort responsible, defects which he has either 
caused, or for ultimate reasons permitted, or has not 
yet, in the present stage of evolution, been able to 
cure consistently with full education and adequate 
scope for free development of personahty; defects 
which surely his conscious creatures will assist him to 
remove, now that the bare possibiHty of the existence 
of these ferocious evils has done its salutary and ulti- 
mately beneficent work. 

In this sense, therefore, it would be inappropriate 
to deny any amount of wrath against sin and even 
against the blatant sinner — ^the class of people who 
can only be impressed by the falling of a stone which 
shall grind them to powder. But it is not for people 
in the vicious state that the consolations of religion 
are available, they are not the bruised reed whom he 
will not break : and there is no sense in perplexing or- 
dinary struggling, kindly, weak, unhappy humanity, 
with alleged fearful penalties attaching to even 
minor disobedience: penalties which must be exacted 
somehow, no matter much from whom; nor need we 
spoil people's conception of the Fatherhood of God 
with distorted legends, representing him as a Roman 
Father who will not scruple to visit their sins and 
shortcomings upon the innocent body of his own Son, 
since that is the only condition on which his wrath 
may be turned away and his hand not stretched out 
stiU. 



SIN, SUFFERING AND WRATH 235 

3. There is one sentence in my last chapter wherein 
I appear to suggest that Christ's body was human, 
his spirit divine; thus making a possibly untenable 
though simple distinction between the vehicle and the 
manifestation, and trespassing on a theological terri- 
tory which is full of heretical pit-falls. 

It would have been better to avoid even the appear- 
ance of entering on so large a question as the nature 
of Christ by a mere side-door. My object at the mo- 
ment was not anything so ambitious, but merely to 
indicate what would be the effect on mankind of the 
arrival of a personage, with a human and therefore 
accessible and mortal body, animated by a spirit of 
divine perfection. I wished to urge that among the 
results of the thorough incarnation of a truly Divine 
Spirit would be the beginnings of a real atonement 
between man and God ; and that the influence exerted 
would be exerted wholly on man. Farther than that 
I did not then intend to go; nor do I propose to go 
much farther now, though the temptation is consider- 
able. It is easy to recognise that the subjects of the 
Incarnation and the Resurrection are profoundly dif- 
ficult, and yet to feel impelled to express surprise at 
the language which eminent theologians sometimes 
permit themselves to employ. I take the following 
astounding sentence from Canon Moberly's article in 
Luoc Mundi: 

P. 236. "No one will now dispute that Jesus died 
upon the Cross. If He did not on the third day rise 
again from that death to life — cadit qucestio — all 
Christian dogma, all Christian faith, is at an end," 



236 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

I suppose it is intended as a paraphrase of St. 
Paul's "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching 
vain and your faith is also vain." But the two state- 
ments are perfectly diiFerent. If Christ be not risen 
in some sense or other, if his death was the end of him, 
according to the current but perhaps not quite cor- 
rect conception of the death of a dog, then indeed is 
the prospect blank. 

But "rise again from death to life on the third day" 
must mean far more than persistent existence and in- 
fluence : it seems to mean resuscitation, after the man- 
ner of Lazarus. Indeed, the fourth article of the 
Church definitely asserts that it does mean that and 
more. But an attempt to link the whole of Christian 
faith inextricably with an anatomical statement about 
flesh and bones, as in Article 4 of the Anglican 
Church, is rash. 

Again : 

P. 237. "No one to-day disputes that He was 
truly man. Is it true that He was very God? It is 
either true or false. As to the fact there are only the 
two alternatives. And between the two the gulf is 
impassable. If it is not false it is true. If it is not 
absolutely true it is absolutely false." 

Do theologians always know what they mean when 
they glibly use, in a serious and solemn sense, the 
awful term God? Have they any notion of the Uni- 
verse at all? Are they still hmited to tribal or plane- 
tary conceptions of Deity? They talk, or used to 
talk, about "dispensations." We ourselves, as a na- 
tion, give dispensations to children or savages other 



SIN, SUFFERING AND WRATH 237 

than we should give to developed people ; a planetary 
dispensation is one thing, a planetary God another. 
These attempted identifications of the Messiah with 
the Most High, verge on the blasphemous. When 
Peter was blessed for a burst of bold and enthusiastic 
affirmation and adequate recognition of Christ's di- 
vine nature, he said no such thing as that. What he 
said was, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living 
God." 

As to affirming that Christ is either God or is not 
God and that there is nothing more to be said: there 
are few complex propositions of which so simple a 
positive or negative affirmation can be made. For 
instance, it is almost proverbially difficult to reply to 
the childish question whether a given historical char- 
acter was "good" or was not good. 

The word God must have an infinite diversity of 
meaning, and two uses of the term are prominent. 
One connotes vaguely the Absolute Sustainer and 
Comprehender of all existence: the other signifies 
such detailed conception of Godhead as the human 
race has been able to frame. This latter has been 
helped on mightily by the revelation of Jesus, among 
those who can accept it, — ^the revelation of genuinely 
human faculties and f eehngs, and even something of 
the unconscious simphcity, of childhood,^ in the Di- 
vine Being, — and the further revelation, so enthusias- 
tically glimpsed by the youthful David near the end 
of Browning's poem "Saul," the perception that Di- 

1 Luke ix. 48. 



238 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

vine as well as human love may be and actually is 
strong enough to submit to sacrifice and genuine suf- 
fering on behalf of the beloved. 

This revelation and perception may to some have 
become so keen and piercing that to no other aspect of 
Godhead can they pay attention. These are they 
who say that Christ was very God in the absolute 
sense; and subjectively they may be right. It is a 
statement, not of what they conceive of Christ, but of 
what they mean by God. One cannot define or ex- 
plain the known in terms of the unknown. 

4. Lastly we come to the doctrine of a vicarious 
Atonement, and in what sense that can be considered 
to embody a genuine truth. The late Bishop of 
Southampton, Dr. Arthur Lyttelton, in his article on 
the Atonement in JLuoo Mundi (pp. 282, 283), says 
that — 

"It was from the Law that the Jews derived their 
religious language; their conceptions of sacrifice, of 
atonement, of the effects of sin, were moulded by the 
influence of the Mosaic ceremonies. . . . The sacri- 
ficial ceremonies and language of the Law throw light 
upon the apostolic conception of the Sacrifice, the 
Atonement of Christ." 

With this historical estimate I entirely agree. The 
ceremony of the Scapegoat, and indeed the whole so- 
called Mosaic system, are clearly responsible for a 
great deal of the doctrine which penetrated into the 
New Testament, and has survived even to the present 
day. 



SIN, SUFFERING AND WRATH 239 

But then it will be found that this same Article is 
full of the word "propitiation": — a word which em- 
bodies compactly what I regard as an error or a 
crudity, and serves to focus the issue. The basis of 
his contention throughout is given succinctly in the 
following passage (p. 282) : 

"Examination of the sacrificial system of the Old 
Testament is necessary in a discussion of the doctrine 
of the Atonement, for several reasons. 

"The institutions of the Law were, in the first 
place, ordained by God, and therefore intended to re- 
veal in some degree His purposes. His mind towards 
man." 

That is where I join issue. I would rather go to 
the opposite extreme and say that the Gospel was an 
attempt to break away from sacrificial and priestly 
tradition; that the "not destroy but fulfil" referred 
to the major denunciations and other accumulations 
of race-experience, which were on right lines as far 
as they went, not to the minor institutions and super- 
stitions which had become an incubus destructive of 
living personal religion. We may not all in every 
respect be equally ena*moured of the parable of the 
Prodigal Son — I myself am conscious of a subter- 
ranean sympathy with the sentiments expressed by 
his elder brother — but the whole story is very human, 
very familiar, and full of manifest inspiration; and 
without wishing to press it unduly, we must admit that 
any feeling of wrath against the offender, or even 
against the offence, is rather conspicuously absent 
from its scheme. The sense of guilt is there, in pro- 



240 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

nounced form, but as a one-sided feeling; and its 
paternal counterpart seems not to have been removed 
by expiatory sacrifice or by propitiation of any kind, 
but simply to be non-existent. There is very little 
residue of the Mosaic dispensation in that story. 

So markedly has this been felt indeed by some 
preachers that, in dismay at finding themselves 
adrift from their familiar moorings, a few have 
actually seized upon the fatted calf and tried to 
construct some kind of propitiatory sacrifice out of 
that. 

But observe that I have never said a vrord against 
vicarious suffering: I have contended against the 
notion of vicarious punishment — a very diiferent 
idea. But I cannot ^gree with everything that is said 
even about vicarous suffering — real though it admit- 
tedly is. For instance, the Bishop of Southwark 
urges that the vicarious suffering of the Atonement 
did somehow redress, cancel, redeem, propitiate, — 
these words are used in a private letter, while their 
substance appears in the article above referred to, — • 
and he appears to insist that the idea of a Father who 
is necessarily hard upon us because himself so right- 
eous, is a part of the orthodox view. With great de- 
ference I cannot admit the appropriateness of the 
above verbs to modern insight: they seem to me sat- 
urated with the atmosphere of pagan survival and of 
ante-Isaiah Jewish traditions. No one supposes them 
to apply to vicious and persistent sins; but if they 
only apply to negligences and ignorances for which 
we are heartily sorry and earnestly repent, they are 



SIN, SUFFERING AND WRATH 241 

unnecessary, except in a subjective and comforting 
sense. 

But then this is a real sense: there must be some 
meaning in the perennial experience of rehef and 
renovation at the Cross. Was it not there that Chris- 
tian's burden fell, — type of many thousands of de- 
vout persons? Is there no regenerating agency at 
work in justification of this mass of real human ex- 
perience? Far be it from me to doubt it; and it be- 
hoves me, who have presumed to emphasise one aspect, 
to emphasise the other also, in order to make a picture 
not too obviously incomplete and one-sided. 

I am now going to use the word "sin" in its theo- 
logical and, so to speak, "official" sense, — ^the sense of 
imperfection, disunion, lack of harmony, the struggle 
among the members that St. Paul for all time ex- 
pressed; there is usually associated with it a sense of 
impotence, a recognition of the impossibility of 
achieving peace and unity in one's own person, a feel- 
ing that aid must be forthcoming from a higher 
source. It is this feeling which enables the spectacle 
of any noble self-sacrificing human action to have an 
elevating effect, it is this which gropes after the pos- 
sibilities of the highest in human nature, it is a feeling 
which for large tracts of this planet has found its 
highest stimulus and completest satisfaction in the 
life and death of Christ. All rehgions worthy of the 
name are based upon some heroic and self-sacrificing 
life, upon some man with clearer vision than his fel- 
lows, one who is in closer touch and sympathy with 
the Divine. 



242 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

And not insight and heroism alone : Paul was able 
to bear the sufferings of this present time with hero- 
ism, but Paul was not crucified for us, nor are we bap- 
tised in the name of Paul. No, there is evidently 
something unique about the majesty of Jesus of Naz- 
areth which raises him above the rank of man; and 
the willingness of such a Being to share our nature, 
to live the life of a peasant, and to face the horrible 
certainty of execution by torture, in order personally 
to help those whom he was pleased to call his brethren, 
is a race-asset which, however masked and overlaid 
with foreign growths, yet gleams through every cov- 
ering and suffuses the details of common life with 
fragrance. 

This conspicuously has been a redeeming, or rather 
a regenerating agency — I know nothing of "cancel- 
ling," "redressing," or "propitiating": those words I 
repudiate; but it has regenerated, — for by filling the 
soul with love and adoration and fellow-feeling for 
the Highest, the old cravings have often been almost 
hypnotically rendered distasteful and repellent, the 
bondage of sin has been loosened from many a spirit, 
the lower entangled self has been helped from the 
slough of despond and raised to the shores of a larger 
hope, whence it can gradually attain to harmony and 
peace. 

There are other parts of tKe Hon. Arthur Lyttel- 
ton's beautiful essay on the Atonement in Luoo Mundi 
to which I should like to refer. I find myself in 
agreement with the initial three or four pages and 



I 



SIN, SUFFERING AND WRATH 24S 

with the concluding three or four pages ahnost en- 
tirely. By dint of working through a maze of rather 
intractable material, which he treats as well as it is 
possible for it to be treated, he arrives at what I con- 
ceive to be the legitimate conclusion. He discards 
the infinite-punishment doctrine completely, he 
brushes Hghtly aside M'Leod Campbell's infinite-re- 
pentance modification of it, and he attempts to justify 
the view of a perfect sacrifice. 

So far as he associates this with vicarious penalty 
and emphasises the propitiatory aspect of the Atone- 
ment, he goes, as I consider, wrong; he even argues 
that in his agony and death the Son must have been 
engaged in propitiating not only his Father's WTath 
but his own also; that he was, in fact, taking upon 
himself, and so both retrospectively and prospectively 
warding off from others, the wrath of the Lamb. 
This truly is a logical outcome of the orthodox doc- 
trine, but it should serve as one of the modes of dis- 
crediting some of the crudity in that doctrine and re- 
ducing it to a kind of absurdity. 

But when Dr. Lyttelton arrives at page 310 he has 
emerged from Mosaic mediaevalism into an atmos- 
phere of truth: it is true that Christ bore his suffer- 
ings, as we should learn to bear ours, victoriously and 
in unbroken union with God. He showed that the 
highest and the best might have to suffer, so long as 
the world was imperfect. 

In an admirable essay on "Pain" by J. R. Illing- 
worth in JLuoc Mundi this part of the matter is put 
with great clearness: 



244 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

"Once for all the sinless suffering of the Cross has 
parted sin from suffering with a clearness of distinc- 
tion never before achieved. • . . The sight of perfect 
sinlessness combined with perfect suffering has 
cleared our view for ever. . . . Sin indeed always 
brings suffering in its train, but the suffering we now 
see to be of the nature of its antidote. . . . But while 
sin involves suffering, suffering does not involve sin. 
. . . We suffer because we sin, but we also sin because 
we decline to suffer. . . . The pleasures of each gen- 
eration evaporate in air; it is their pains that increase 
the spiritual momentum of the world." And so on 
(p. 123 to the end). 

The problem which had puzzled the ages, the prob- 
lem of the book of Job, of the tower of Siloam, was 
practically solved. 

And Christ showed how the sting might be taken 
out of all suffering by meeting it with a spirit of un- 
daunted faith. The power of sin lay in the presence 
of an evil and rebellious disposition. Rid of that, and 
though pains and sorrows would come as before, they 
could be faced in a spirit, not of submission only, but 
of undying love and hope and almost joy. 

So the cognate or complementary problem of the 
Greek Dramatists also — the problem which looms 
large in the tragedies of Euripides in especial — the 
dread that man is the sport and plaything of omnipo- 
tence — the fear, the paralysing fear, of caprice or 
even wickedness on the part of higher powers — the 
dismal uncertainty whether pain is not sometimes 
mere gratuitous torture, the outcome of divine jeal- 



SIN, SUFFERING AND WRATH 245 

ousy or malevolence or anger or some other pagan 
attribute: all this was somehow removed from man- 
kind by the victory of Christ, and except in a few 
individual cases has never very seriously troubled it 
since. 

IN^ot only was indifference to suffering and tem- 
poral loss the outcome of it, but there was superadded 
a certain glory in suffering, in emulation of so noble 
an example: to fill up, as was hyperbolically said, 
what was behind; this feeling infused such vitality 
into the Apostles and the early Church as to carry 
them victoriously through a terrible period of danger 
and untold misery. It made them staunch; men and 
emperors found that they simply could not effectively 
hurt those whom this faith had seized. And in less 
troublous times the element of suffering and poverty 
was still felt to be so vital that it was often self-in- 
flicted in order to secure a deeper joy. So is it always 
in ages of burning faith; comfort and luxury and 
this present life, with all that they rightly contain of 
happiness, are cast aside as almost worthless in ex- 
change for a spiritual exaltation. 

But it will be said that this violent enthusiasm and 
contempt for mere individual temporal well-being is 
not Christian alone, that it is common to all religions. 
Granted. I will not contend that Christ was the only 
channel of this influence, though he has been the chan- 
nel for most of us; nor do Buddhism, Brahminism, 
Mohammedanism, Confucianism, exhaust the cate- 
gory of religions more or less efficient in this particu- 
lar. In islands of strange worship, amid savages ofi 



246 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

unclean life, the same enthusiasm for the spiritual as 
dominating the material is felt ; for it is a part of the 
truth of God, and is limited to no age or creed. And 
in countries which by superficial outsiders are said 
to have no religious faith it is to be found. The Jap- 
anese soldier throws away his individual life by the 
thousand, in order that his nation may take a noble 
place in the world and begin its destined work of 
civilising Asia; yet when he is dead what is Asia or 
his country to him? He must be dominated by a hv- 
ing faith, in perhaps he knows not what. He may 
not be able to express it, but his faith may be none the 
less efficient for lacking the outward precision of an 
Athanasian formula. 

But whatever be the case with other religions, the 
sacrifice of Christ has convinced the Western world 
of sin to a unique degree, of its reality and dire con- 
sequence, of its unreasonableness, its aspect as a dis- 
ease which must be cured — with the knife if need be, 
but cured; we have learnt that it is foreign to the 
universe, it is not the will of God, it is not due to his 
caprice, or amusement, or dictation, or predestination, 
or pagan example; it is something which gives even 
Him pain and suffering; it is something to be rid of, 
and there is no peace or joy to be had until unity of 
will is secured and past rebellions are forgiven. The 
sin of the creature involves suffering in the Creator: 
the whole of existence is so bound together that dis- 
ease in one part means pain throughout. This is the 
element of truth in the vicariousness of suffering, 



SIN, SUFFERING AND WRATH 247 

and in extension of suffering to the Highest; but it 
is not vicariously penal, nor is it propitiatory. 

The orthodox doctrine of the Atonement imphcitly 
maintains that God cannot forgive sin, unless and 
until He has exacted an adequate penalty somewhere. 
This does embody a kind of truth, for an eddy of 
conduct, good or ill, can only disappear by expending 
its energy in producing some definite effect. In one 
sense, therefore, a penalty must follow every inhar- 
monious action: a penalty not falling on the wrong- 
doer alone, but, involving the innocent likewise, and 
bringing needless pain into existence. Perception of 
this may be part of the punishment, for there can 
hardly be a fiercer feeling than remorse ; but the sting 
will not be fully felt till the spirit has become broken 
and contrite and open to the healing influences of 
forgiveness. There is no agony like that of returning 
animation. Forgiveness removes no penalty: it may 
even increase pain, though only that of a regenera- 
tive kind; it leaves material consequences unaltered, 
but it may achieve spiritual reform. 

Divine forgiveness is undoubtedly mysterious, but 
it must be real, for we are conscious that we can for- 
give each other. It should be an axiom that what- 
ever man can do, God a fortiori can do also ; meaning 
by "man" not merely any poor individual man, but 
the whole highest ethos of the race, including saints, 
apostles, prophets, everybody, — and including Christ 
himself. How are we taught to ask for forgiveness 
of sins? As we forgive others. This does not solely 



248 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

mean, as it is usually taken to mean, because we for- 
give others, nor in so far as, nor on condition that we 
forgive our fellows, but it means after the same 
fashion as we forgive or should forgive them. And 
the reason given is a luminous one ; it has nothing to 
do with propitiation, it makes no reference to sacrifice 
or vicarious penalty, nor to the merits of, any media- 
tor ; no, the reason given is a noble and sufficient one, 
and it is simply this: "For Thine is the Kingdom, 
and the Power, and the Glory, for ever." What 
more can we add but the word "Amen"? 



CHAPTER XII 

THE MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 

MEN of science who make a life-study of the ma- 
terial world alone, and habitually close their 
minds to the influences of poetry and of emotional 
and rehgious and even philosophical hterature gen- 
erally, are apt to grow into the behef that the material 
aspect of the universe is the only aspect which mat- 
ters, — sometimes going so far as to hold that it is the 
only aspect which is truly real. 

Theologians and mystics and even men of letters, 
are Hable to err in a similar though complementary 
manner, and by exclusive attention to one region of 
human nature become so imbued with its supreme 
importance that they ignore and despise the universe 
of matter, force, and energy; regarding with com- 
placence not only their own ignorance, but the ignor- 
ance also of teachers of youth. 

This distinction between schools of thought on 
the intellectual plane is fairly obvious; and a similar 
distinction holds also in the religious sphere. 

There are those, on the one hand, who hold that 
"God" and "spiritual beings" and "guidance" and 
"intelligent control" are words of only superstitious 
meaning — that the world, as revealed by our senses, 
is the sole reality, our bodily life our true and only 

249 



250 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

existence, and the world of poetry and religion but a 
dream. 

There are those, on the other hand, who so im- 
merse themselves in spiritual contemplation that the 
things of sense shrink into notliingness, and our pres- 
ent life, with all that pertains to bodily and terrestrial 
activity, becomes insignificant, or even acquires a neg- 
ative value, since material things are a snare and a 
temptation, tending to divert our feet from the true 
path, and apt to fill our souls with clogging and 
vicious trifles. 

The extreme in the one case has been called roughly 
materialism or naturalism or positivism; its religion 
is a practical reUgion of human nature and earthly 
service, its god a glorified humanity, and its immor- 
tality merely racial, being one of sentiment and mem- 
ory. 

The extreme in the other case has been called spirit- 
ualism or mysticism or asceticism or puritanism, for 
it has many phases; its religion is largely occupied 
with worship, sometimes in the form of contemplative 
awe and ecstasy, sometimes of labour for the glory 
of God; its God is a high and holy Personality of 
illimitable perfection, far removed from the strug- 
gles and trials of this mortal life, which is a mere epi- 
sode or probationary discipline before men's souls are 
lapped for ever in the peace of the Eternal, or are 
tortured by exclusion from His presence for all eter- 
nity. 

Between the extremes comes the religion which we 
know as Christianity. Looked at cosmically, this 



MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 251 

aims at being a comprehensive and inclusive scheme, 
capable of embracing the essential elements of both 
the other systems, — recognising and worshipping God 
in the Highest, loving and serving man even at his 
lowest, accepting the facts of nature and despising 
nothing that exists, desiring to utilise the opportuni- 
ties of this present life to the uttermost, and yet be- 
lieving that it is possibly not the beginning, certainly 
not the end, of our existence; rejoicing in the objects 
of sense, realising also the beauty and truth of things 
only reached now by studious contemplation, reject- 
ing the idea of any ultimate conflict between matter 
and spirit, and, when they appear to conflict, giving 
supremacy to the spiritual. 

It is the mission of the Priest to emphasise one of 
these aspects; it is the business of the Naturalist to 
emphasise the other ; it is the desire of the Philosopher 
to realise the element of truth in both departments, to 
grasp truth in its breadth and comprehensiveness; 
while it is the duty of the Religious man to apply the 
truths, so recognised, in the conduct of practical life. 

But the task of the unifier is not an easy one ; it is 
not to be supposed that every exuberant utterance of 
the mystic is true, that every balanced imitation of the 
naturalist is true, and that it only remains to under- 
stand and accept both. His task is much harder than 
that: he has to exercise discrimination, to scrutinise 
and weigh carefully, not letting himself be over-per- 
suaded by the enthusiasts on either side, and so gradu- 
ally to evolve for himself a system of thought which is 
as true and helpful as may be possible to a being in his 



252 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

present state of development. This is the task which 
Kes before us all, and this is the task upon which the 
great prophets of humanity, each in his day and gen- 
eration, have been engaged. This work absorbs the 
attention of many leading Christian theologians at 
the present time — ^men who exhibit welcome breadth 
of knowledge and are imbued with scientific method. 

I. The Correspondence of Spiritual and Ma- 
terial 

First of all, then, the whole doctrine of "Incarna- 
tion" exhibits an idea of the interaction between the 
spiritual and material. Just as man has at least a dual 
nature — the material organism and the dominant mind 
— so it was felt must God be thought of as interacting 
directly with this material scheme, and must be sup- 
posed incarnated in or clothed upon with a material 
body, subject to growth, disintegration, and death, 
like our own. An extraordinary and bold concep- 
tion, manifestly symbolic or pictorial of something, — 
not literal nor reducible to any simple formula, — ^it 
nevertheless involves a great truth, the kinship be- 
tween spirit and matter. Any divine revelation to be 
accessible to us, must have an accessible and bodily 
form. So must a ghost or vision ; however objectively 
unreal it may be, it must appear in the likeness of man, 
and will usually have garments such as we have been 
accustomed to associate with human beings: it must 
appear in material accessories, or it could not appear 
at all. That is the essence of revelation : and even in 
the most sublimated case, even if no outward form or 



MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 25S 

voice were subjectively constructed, yet something in 
the brain must be affected, else not only could there be 
neither speech nor language, there could not be any 
definite impression, not even the vanishing impression 
of a dream. 

But the materialising tendency of the human race 
has gone farther than that. Given the incarnation of 
a divine spirit in a mortal frame, they have not been 
content with that already sufficiently difficult idea; 
they have pressed further to ask how that body was 
produced, and what ultimately became of it; and so 
w^e have legends of abnormal birth and of bodily 
resurrection. 

But the latter difficulty is not a problem raised by 
the phenomena associated with Christ alone; it is a 
difficulty which has troubled all humanity. We are 
all supposed to be spirits endowed with immortality, 
as taught the ancients; but we all have bodies — the 
apparently necessary medium of manifestation and of 
individuality, — ^what becomes of them? Socrates was 
content to suppose that the body remained behind, 
sloughed off, and was restored to the elements of this 
material world. But the early Christians were not 
satisfied thus to get rid of their material part : a vein 
of materialism ran through their Christianity; they 
supposed that the bodies were only temporarily dis- 
carded, and would ultimately rise and rejoin their di- 
vorced spirits at the sound of some future signal: a 
grotesque idea which, strange to say, still survives in 
the thoughts of unimaginative persons and in some 
portions of the liturgy. 



254 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

But, it is contended, this is an essential part of 
Christianity, however it be interpreted; the mere per- 
sistence of existence was a pagan idea and existed long 
before Christ. The special feature of Christianity 
was not the survival or persistence of existence, even 
of individual existence, but the resurrection of the 
body ; and hence this doctrine is rightly emphasised in 
the creeds. 

Moreover, the very basis of Christianity — the In- 
carnation — emphasises and dignifies the perception 
that man consists essentially of both soul and body, 
and that he is to be aided and raised and saved, not by 
spiritual influences alone, but by agencies appealing 
to his senses and acting primarily upon his bodily or- 
ganism. 

It is the neglect of this truth which has often ren- 
dered the evangelising activity of religious bodies so 
futile. They have tried to save souls alone. They 
are growing wiser now, and are beginning to realise 
that once bodily conditions are set fairly right, peo- 
ple's souls are much better than has been credited; 
there is a lot of innate goodness in humanity, and to 
enable it to blossom and flourish it needs little more 
than the material care which is lavished upon the 
plants in the garden. They themselves do the flower- 
ing and fruiting, — the gardener has only to expose 
them to sun and air to keep them clear of parasites 
and weeds. 

And so, throughout, it will be found that Christi- 
anity has a definitely materialistic side ; and it becomes 
a question for us what is to be the modern interpreta- 



MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 255 

tion of all the singularly developed mediaeval doc- 
trine, and how far it is to be accepted as in any sense 
corresponding to reality. For that it is not to be ac- 
cepted in a crude form, such as that in which it is 
preached by ignorant persons to-day, was obvious to 
the Xew Testament writers, and doubtless to the most 
enhghtened saints of all time; but that it contains 
some element of truth, enshrined in its strange form- 
alism is to be strongly maintained. 

The purely spiritual side of religion, so far as it 
contents itself with positive assertion and is not oc- 
cupied with denying material facts, does not now con- 
cern us. It is the material side which I wish to con- 
sider, especially whether religion should have a ma- 
teriahstic basis, and how far its excursion into ma- 
terialism may be warranted by experience. It is 
plain that for our present mode of apprehending the 
universe a material vehicle is essential; that which has 
no contact with the world of matter cannot be di- 
rectly apprehended, and has for us no effective exist- 
ence. A purely spiritual agency may be active and 
the activity may be guessed at or inferred, and may 
be believed in, but the only evidence of its existence 
that can be adduced is the manifestation of that ac- 
tivity through matter, and the only moments when a 
glimpse can be caught of the activity are the moments 
at which action on matter occurs. 

Dreams, visions, thoughts, inspirations, — all things 
known to us, no matter how intangible and subtle 
their essence — are enabled to enter what we call our 
present consciousness solely by some action on, or ac- 



256 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

tion in, the brain. They may act on other material 
particles too, but on the matter of the brain they must 
act, or they give no sign. 

A whole world may exist beyond our senses, may 
exist even in space and close to us for all we can tell, 
and yet if it has no means of connexion, no links with 
the material world, it must remain outside our con- 
sciousness ; and this isolation must last until we grow 
a new sense, or otherwise develop fresh faculties, so 
that intercommunication and interaction can begin. 
Whether there is any interaction at present between 
this and a supersensual world is a question that may 
be debated, but the above assertion that some such, 
interaction is an essential preliminary to our recogni- 
tion of such a world is hardly susceptible of debate. 

Now, this dependence of the spiritual on a vehicle 
for manifestation is not likely to be a purely tempor- 
ary condition: it is probably a sign or example of 
something which has an eternal significance, a repre- 
sentation of some permanent truth. 

That is certainly the working hypothesis which, 
until negatived, we ought to make. Our senses limit 
us, but do not deceive us : so far as they go, they tell 
us the truth. I wish to proceed on that hypothesis. 
To suppose that our experience of the necessary and 
fundamental connexion between the two things — the 
something which we know as mind and the something 
which is now represented by matter — has no counter- 
part or enlargement in the actual scheme of the uni- 
verse, as it really exists, is needlessly to postulate con- 
fusion and instrumental deception. 



MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 257 

Philosophers have been so impressed with this that 
they have conjectured that mind and matter are but 
aspects, or modes of perception, of one fundamental 
comprehensive unity ; a unity which is neither exactly 
mind nor exactly matter as we conceive them, but is 
something fundamental and underlying both, as the 
ether is now conceived of as sustaining and in some 
sense constituting* all the phenomena of the visible 
universe. 

This monistic view, if true at all, is likely to be per- 
manently and actually true; and, though it by no 
means follows that mind is dependent on matter as we 
know it, it will probably be still by means of something 
akin to matter — something which can act as a ve- 
hicle and represent it in the same sort of way that 
matter represents it now — ^that it will hereafter be 
manifested. 

This probability or possibility may be regarded as 
one form of statement of an orthodox Christian doc- 
trine. Assuming that Christianity emphasises the 
material aspect of religion, as its supporters assert that 
it does, it supplements the mere survival of a discar- 
nate spirit, a homeless wanderer or melancholy ghost, 
with the warm and comfortable clothing of something 
that may legitimately be spoken of as a "body"; that 
is to say, it postulates a supersensually visible and tan- 
gible vehicle or mode of manifestation, fitted to sub- 
serve the needs of future existence as our bodies sub- 
serve the needs of terrestrial life — an ethereal or other 
entity constituting the persistent "other aspect," and 



258 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

fulfilling some of the functions which the atoms of 
terrestrial matter are employed to fulfil now. 

Not only the authority of St. Paul, but the influ- 
ence also of poets, can be appealed to as sustaining 
some truth underlying the crude idea above formu- 
lated. To them the highest feelings have, and appear 
necessarily to have, a material outcome or counterpart 
associated with them. Take "love," for instance: 
many have been the attempts to spiritualise it into a 
discarnate entity; and doubtless it is in its highest 
form the purest and least gross of all the emotions; 
yet it must ultimately be recognised that it has a sac- 
ramental or material side, wherein the flesh and the 
spirit are united and inseparable, and where neither 
can be discarded without loss to the other. It has been 
always easy to deride and condemn the bodily side of 
our nature, but by the highest seers this has not been 
done. The glorification and transfiguration, not the 
reprobation, of the body has been the theme of the 
highest prophets and poets, and those who in "matter" 
detect nothing but evil are essential, though well- 
meaning, blasphemers. It has been easy also to tilt 
the balance the other way, and, by discarding or ig- 
noring the spiritual side, to wallow and blaspheme in a 
far more degraded and degrading manner. This 
tendency in times of decadence has been dominant, 
and nations and individuals have had to struggle with 
the overweight of their animal ancestry, and some 
have succumbed; but, shorn of its exaggeration, there 
is a truth to be perceived on the material side too, and 
we must be careful that in spurning the exaggeration 



MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 259 

we do not lose some of the essential truth embodied in 
it. In so far as the mis-called "fleshly school of poet- 
ry," for instance, is not fleshly in any low sense, but 
inspired, the permanence and importance and dignity 
of the side now known as material is the truth which is 
being preached/ It may happen that in some cases 
the message is too dazzling for the messenger, and he 
may succumb to the enchantment of his vision, so that 
he lose the jewel itself and be left bHndly grasping 
only its empty setting ; but the message itself must not 
be unduly discredited on that account. 

Assuming then — as consonant with, or even as part 
of, Christianity — ^the doctrine of the dignity and nec- 
essary character of some quasi-material counterpart 
of every spiritual essence, it becomes our duty to in- 
quire what part of this connexion is essential, and 
what is accidental and temporary. 

Take our present incarnation as an example. We 
display ourselves to mankind in the garb of certain 
clothes, artificially constructed of animal and vegeta- 
ble materials, and in the form of a certain material or- 
ganism, put together by processes of digestion and as- 
similation, likewise composed of terrestrial materials. 

The identity of the corporeal substances and chemi- 
cal compounds is evidently not of a permanent and 
important character. Whether they formed part of 
sheep or birds or fish or plants, they are assimilated 

1 1 regret to have to refer, even for the sake of illustration, to 
this discredited and noxious criticism of the poetry of Rossetti, but I 
hope that the lofty character of the thing criticised is sufficiently manifest 
to enable every reader to perceive the beauty of the message and the 
inspiration of the poet. 



260 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

and become part of us, being arranged by our sub- 
conscious activities and vital processes into appropri- 
ate form, just as truly as other materials are con- 
sciously woven into garments, no matter what they or- 
iginally sprang from. Moreover, just as our clothes 
wear out and require darning and patching, so our 
bodies wear out; the particles are in continual flux; 
each giving place to others, and being constantly dis- 
carded and renewed. The identity of the actual or 
instantaneous body is therefore an affair of no impor- 
tance: the individuality lies deeper than that, and be- 
longs to whatever it is which put the particles together 
in this shape and not another. 

II. The Resurrection of the Body 

When, therefore, at what we call death, this con- 
trolling entity leaves the terrestrial sphere of things — 
assuming that it does not promptly go out of exist- 
ence, a thing which it would be very surprising for 
any existing entity to do — it is unnecessary to suppose 
that it will continue in a wholly discarnate condition 
for a time, until presently it becomes able to resume 
the poor decayed refuse which it left behind on this 
planet. 

The idea of rejoining the corpse in this sense is un- 
thinkable and repulsive : it could only arise in ages of 
ignorance. The identity of the material particles 
does not constitute the identity of the person, nor is 
it essential to the identity of the body. What is 
wanted to make definite our thoughts of the persistent 
existence of what we call our immortal part, is simply 



MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 261 

the persistent power of manifesting itself to friends, 
i.e, to persons with whom we are in sympathy, by^ 
means as plain and substantial in that order of ex- 
istence as the body was here — ^though the manifesta- 
tion need not be of so broadcast and indiscriminate a 
character as it is now •/ — we may surmise that any im- 
mortal part must have the power of constructing for 
itself a suitable vehicle of manifestation which is the 
essential meaning of the term "body." 

The question whether the individuality and personal 
identity and consciousness and memory, and all that 
constitutes an ego, are preserved, is worthy of exami- 
nation and research ; the fate of the terrestrial residue 
is of no great consequence — ^not much more than if it 
consisted solely of old clothes. 

To those who stigmatise this as dualism, and say 
that it is contrary to the ultimate identity of matter 
and spirit, I reply No. Monism does not assert that 
atoms of matter are any aspect of me. The pen- 
holder is an instrument subservient to my will, and it 
may be made to express my thought, but it is no part 
of me — I can throw it down when done with, and 
when worn out I can burn or bury it, but I do not 

1 This sentence probably requires amplification : its meaning is this 
— Present human bodies bring us into contact with strangers and make 
us aware of people in whom perchance we take no interest. Hereafter 
our acquaintanceship may perhaps be limited to those with whom we 
are linked by ties of affinity and affection — the mode of communication 
being probably of a more sympathetic or telepathic character, and less 
physical, than how. If so, this planetary episode is a great opportunity 
for enlarging our sympathies and for making new friends; so that the 
emphasis laid by great prophets on "love," and their condemnation of 
selfishness as a deadly vice specially destructive of fulness of person- 
ality; and wealth of existence, becomes ampljr intelligible. . ,, 



262 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

thereby lose the power of taking another, nor of learn- 
ing to write with a different instrument and in another 
language if I travel to other countries. There may 
be a sense in which all matter is evidence of, and an 
aspect of, the thought of some World-Mind; but 
most of it is certainly neither evidence nor aspect of 
my mind. Matter divorced from all Mind whatever 
may possibly thereby cease to exist ; but the furniture 
certainly does not cease to exist when I leave the room, 
— ^nor would it be affected if all humanity were to 
perish off the planet. 

Those who press monism to these absurd lengths 
will find a difficulty in preserving the clearness of 
their thoughts ; and in self-defence they will take ref- 
uge in a narrow and illiterate and most unscientific 
variety of dogmatic scepticism, or agnostic dogma- 
tism. 

Soul and Body 

The phrase "resurrection of the body" undoubtedly 
dates back to a period when it was thought that the 
residue laid in the grave would at some future signal 
be collected and resuscitated and raised in the air : and 
superstitions about missing fragments and about the 
permissibility of cremation, even to this day, are not 
extinct. But all this is clearly infantile, and has long 
been discarded by leaders of thought; and it were 
good if the phrases responsible for the misunderstand- 
ing could be amended also. 

"Resurrection of a body" would be but little im- 
provement, for the body that hereafter "shall be" is 



MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 263 

not that body which was planted in the ground; and 
the future "body" can hardly be said to have risen 
from the grave. Nor does the Nicene version "resur- 
rection of the dead" give much assistance, for that 
which survives is just that which never was dead; it 
did not cease to be, and then arise to new life ; its ex- 
istence, if persistent at all, is necessarily continuous; 
the whole argument for persistence of existence de- 
pends on continuity, — on the fact that real existence 
does not suddenly spring into being out of nothing, 
and then suddenly vanish as if it had not been. 

Perhaps the word "resurrection" may be interpreted 
as meaning revival or survival; and "death" can be de- 
fined as a separation between the psychical and physi- 
cal aspects of an individual, and as a definite physico- 
chemical process occurring to the body or material 
vehicle of manifestation. So far as the undying es- 
sence or spirit is concerned the teaching of Socrates 
holds to this day: "Let them bury him if they could 
catch him : but he himself would be out of their reach." 

It is all very well to stigmatise this as pagan teach- 
ing, and to hold it in light esteem, — it is teaching to 
which multitudes to-day have not risen ; and a real and 
vital belief in such a doctrine could not but have a be- 
neficent influence on conduct. It may be true to say 
Christianity assumes all that, and supplements it with 
the Pauline doctrine of a resurrection-body, or spirit- 
ual body; — it does, but it is likewise true that the 
phrases of the Church do not assist people to grasp 
even the truth underlying the Socratic doctrine of im- 
mortality, and so, when they perceive the falsity of 



264 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

corporeal resurrection, they are apt to lose faith even 
in persistence of existence. Having been accustomed 
to associate personality with a buried corpse, the mani- 
fest decay and dissipation of the body destroys, in the 
semi-educated, the whole idea of immortality ; and with 
it is apt to go religion too. "Resurrection" is itself 
a misleading word : the phrases which suggest that the 
person himself is entombed, the phrases about wait- 
ing till the last day, and about the general resurrec- 
tion, even the habit of burying with the face to the 
east, and the custom of burying relatives together, are 
all misleading or are liable to misinterpretation. 
Some of these customs are legitimate and humanly 
intelligible; and so strong a hold have these ideas on 
mankind, that even the greatest poets, who have 
shaken themselves loose from the thought, cannot, and 
possibly do not wish to, shake themselves loose from 
the time-honoured language in which it was embedded, 
for even Tennyson says : 

"in the vast Cathedral leave him." 

But God forbid that I should presume to pragma- 
tise or dogmatise as to the language which ought to 
be employed: let us get our thoughts clear, and the 
language of devotion and of poetry may continue to 
be employed in due season. Words and ancient 
phrases can touch the emotions, as music can, without 
being too closely scrutinised by the intellect; the for- 
mulae of centuries must be respected, and a priggish 
precision of expression may be quite unsuited to wor- 
ship. 



MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 265 



III. The Resurrection of Christ 

Let us then, in a spirit of orthodoxy, now approach 
the person of Christ — the Christ long recognised by 
Christendom as a Divine Person in human form: let 
us assume that in order to display himself to the in- 
habitants of this planet he was provided with a body 
like our own, eating and drinking and sleeping and 
suffering and dying like any of us: what should we 
expect to happen to his body — the body of Jesus of 
Nazareth — when it was done with? 

That he should survive death, that he should be able 
to appear to worshippers, that he would exert a peren- 
nial and vivifying influence on his disciples of all time 
— all this is orthodox, and all this is not repugnant to 
science as I conceive it. Is anything more necessary? 
That a historial legend should have grown up con- 
cerning the disappearance of the body from a tomb is 
almost inevitable, considering the state of belief at the 
time. If an apparition of someone recently deceased 
appeared now to ignorant people, I imagine that most 
of them would expect the corpse to have been utilised 
for the purpose, and to have been either temporarily 
or permanently disturbed in its grave. And to dis- 
prove a continued existence it might be held sufficient, 
among ignorant people, to point triumphantly to a 
tomb not empty. 

But, then, Christ by ecclesiastical hypothesis was 
unique: he was not as one of us, his appearance was 
likely to transcend ours, and his body was likely to be 



266 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

differently constituted from ours : so it has been main- 
tained. 

I think it may be argued that, thus conceived, the 
Incarnation would hardly sustain the complete and 
efficient character which orthodox creeds claim for it. 
The whole idea of the Manliood is that he was a man 
Hke ourselves, subject to human needs, open even to 
temptation, obedient to pain and death. That his 
spirit was superior to ours few deny, but that his body 
was essentially different I confess seems to me like 
superstition. His raiment at any rate was made in 
the ordinary way, yet it too shared in the glory of the 
transfiguration. The Transfiguration was a splendid 
episode, typifying the dignifying and dominating of 
matter by the indwelling spirit. The shining in the 
eye of genius, the almost visible glow pervading the 
body in moments of exaltation, this, raised to a higher 
power, permeated and suffused the poor human body 
and travel-worn peasant garments of Christ, till the 
few privileged witnesses had to shade their eyes. 

So it is reported concerning Moses after his solitary 
communion with Jehovah; so it may have been with 
Joan of Arc; so it may be again from time to time 
with the most exalted saints. These things are le- 
gends, it is true, but they are more than legends ; they 
bear on their face the signs of hyperphysical truths 
not in detail of narration, perhaps, but in essence. So 
it was with Saul's vision at Damascus ; so it may have 
been with the scene at the Baptism; so, it is not in- 
conceivable, may there be some foundation of truth 



MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 267 

even for the legendary appearances to Magi and to 
shepherds at the Nativity. 

The mental and the physical are so interwoven, the 
possibilities of clairvoyance are so unexplored, that I 
do not feel constrained to abandon the traditional idea 
that the coming or the going of a great personality 
may be heralded and accompanied by strange oc- 
currences in the region of physical force. The mind 
of man is competent to enchain and enthrall the forces 
of nature, and to produce strange and weird eiFects 
that would not otherwise have occurred. Shall the 
power be limited to his conscious intelligence? May 
it not also be within the power of the subconscious in- 
telhgence, at moments of ecstasy, or at epochs of 
strong emotion or of transition? 

That there should be storms and earthquakes at the 
Crucifixion is sure to be legendary, but that it was 
likewise true is not in the least inconceivable. We 
know too little to be able to dogmatise on such things : 
JVC must observe and generahse as we can. 

Hence if the historical evidence is strong and de- 
finite for the disappearance, not of bodies from tombs, 
but of that one Body from its tomb — ^the exception 
being justified on the ground of its having been in- 
habited by an exceptionally mighty Spirit — I am not 
one to seek to deny the possibility on scientific 
grounds. I will only say that the proof of material 
resurrection or resuscitation adduced in the Gospel is 
not such as will bear scrutiny: it offers no case what- 
ever to the Society for Psychical Research. If the 



268 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

stone and the seal and the watch had been found in- 
tact, and yet the tomb empty, there would have been 
something to investigate. But to find the place aban- 
doned, and the stone rolled away, is equivalent to find 
the grave rifled : no question of dematerialisation need 
arise. But surely that is not what should be meant by 
Christian Resurrection : I submit that for the purposes 
of religion at the present day no exceptional treat- 
ment of the discarded human body is necessary; and 
the difficulties introduced by the eJfFort to contemplate 
the circumstances of anything approaching physical 
resuscitation, or re-employment of the same body, are 
very great. 

The Appearances during the Forty Days are not 
inconsistent with the legends of apparitions the world 
over; and a farewell phantasmal appearance — des- 
cribed as an Ascension — ^is credible enough. The 
presence of the wounds also is quite consistent with 
what is observable in apparitions as known to us : they 
by no means establish physical identity. The body 
notoriously had not its old properties, for it appeared 
and disappeared and penetrated walls ; and ultimately 
this supposed compound of terrestrial particles as- 
cended into another order of things, "and sat down 
for ever at the right hand of God." We are out of 
the region of physics here, and attention to the details 
of any material body in such an atmosphere introduces 
strangely inappropriate considerations ; the very atoms 
of which it was composed would not last for ever, the 
chemical compounds would soon decay: surely we 
need not assert such a thing of the body which was 



MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 269 

buried in the tomb, any more than we assert it of the 
four or five previous bodies which, during the Incar- 
nation, had been worn and discarded, particle by par- 
ticle. 

Moreover, it is depressing to the ordinary Christian, 
who knows or ought to know that his own flesh, bones, 
and other appurtenances will assuredly not rise, to 
have to think of Christ's Resurrection as a unique 
occurrence; for the express Pauline doctrine of the 
Resurrection is that it is the type or pattern of our 
resurrection; and the more normally we can regard 
the human side of Christ, and everything connected 
with his body both before and after death, the better 
and more hopeful is it for us his brethren. 

May I suggest that the mystical spirit, which is the 
vital essence of any church or religious fellowship, 
though it may be incarnate for a time in a creed, 
should not be for ever fossilised therein, but should 
continue open to the fertilising influences of reason 
and expanding kowledge, and, like any other spirit, 
should dominate and survive its material body. 

SUMMARY OF CHAPTER XII 

Lest it be thought that a wholesome and proper in- 
gredient of materialism as an element in Christianity 
has been in this chapter attacked, let me try to make 
plainer t?ie balanced position taken or intended by at- 
tempting a summary of its main points. Its conten- 
tions are as follows : 

1. That Christianity is an intermediate and unify- 



270 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

ing religion, between the extremes of spiritualism on 
the one hand and materialism on the other; and that 
the whole idea of a divine Incarnation as well as many 
of the miracles and the sacraments, can be regarded 
as expressive of this comprehensive character. 

2. That the correspondence or connexion between 
matter and spirit, as now known, is probably a symbol 
or sample of something permanently true, so that a 
double aspect of every fundamental existence is likely 
always to continue; but that the supposed necessary 
and perpetual dependence of the human spirit on ordi- 
nary chemical terrestrial matter, for its manifestation 
and activity, is illusory and superstitious. 1 Cor. xv, 
49, 50. 

3. That not only persistence of existence but full 
retention of personality and individuality can be con- 
ceived, without the hypothesis of retention of any 
particles of terrestrial matter ; since identity of person 
in no way depends upon identity of particles even 
now. 

4. That the real meaning of the term "body" should 
be explained and emphasised as connoting anything 
which is able to manifest feelings, emotions, and 
thoughts, and at the same time to operate efficiently 
on its environment. The temporary character of the 
present human body should be admitted for purposes 
of religion; although it usefully and truthfully dis- 
plays the incarnate part of us during the brief episode 
of terrestrial life. Job. xix, 26. 

5. That the incarnation of Divine Spirit called 
Christ revealed to humanity certain aspects of Deity 



MATERIAL ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 271 

in a unique degree; but the more akin to ordinary hu- 
manity the human side of Christ can be considered, 
the more luminous is the teaching, and the better for 
the hold of Christianity upon the race. 1 Cor. xv, 16. 

6. One of the lessons to be learned is the poten- 
tiaUty of the Divine latent in all humanity : and this is 
displayed both in its freedom to rebel and in its power 
of indispensable and fiUal service. John x, 30, 35. 

7. That the spread of scepticism and dogmatic ag- 
nosticism is largely due to the attempted maintenance 
of incredible and materiaUstic dogmas by the ortho- 
dox; to the comparative neglect of the essential, the 
spiritual, and the practical. 

8. That materialism of an untransfigured and un- 
glorified description is out of place in religion, but 
that the right kind of materiahsm is in place. For the 
mystical or sacramental use of earthly materials is 
helpful, though there always comes a point at which 
they cease to be expressive. An attempt to press them 
beyond their significant point leads to impossible de- 
tails, and becomes indistinguishable from fidgetting 
and worrying superstition, unworthy of an emanci- 
pated and AffiUated race. 

9. That the salvation offered by Christianity is of 
the whole man — ^body and soul together — and that 
this fact is the supreme justification for energetic 
practical effort in rectifying social abuses, in improv- 
ing social conditions, and securing to people generally 
a fair opportunity for a decent and honourable hf e. 



L. 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 

IV. Christianity and History 

AS a physicist my desire is to go out as far as pos- 
sible to meet theologians on their approach to 
the camp of physical science; for it is generally far 
more useful to discover points of possible agreement 
than to emphasise points of difference. To my com- 
rades in science I would point out that the leading men 
among orthodox Christians now set us a good ex- 
ample, since they rio longer seem to desire to interpose 
any insuperable protest against overhauling from time 
to time the material and historical assertions associated 
with Christianity, and discarding those which cannot 
be established as facts. Discarding, that is to say, 
those which do not satisfy one at least of two criteria 
or conditions : that of being well evidenced historically 
on the one hand, and that of satisfying or being felt 
essential to spiritual aspiration, either of an individual 
or of a church or fellowship on the other. If I am 
right in this understanding, I am willing to accept the 
criteria suggested, without further criticism, and have 
pleaded in the foregoing pages for the gradual re- 
consideration of certain traditional tenets, on the 
grounds : 

272 



DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 273 

(a) That they are not of a nature to be well ev- 

idenced historically (to say more than that 
would imply that I regarded myself as a 
competent historical critic) ; 

(b) That they are not edifying to people at any 

reasonable intellectual level; while as to 
higher spiritual aspiration, it is independent 
of them. 

It is satisfactory that culture and learned theolog- 
ians of the present day profess themselves ready to 
welcome criticism of dogmas in which no doubt they 
personally believe ; and we can now shortly proceed to 
the more positive or constructive division of our sub- 
ject. 

Meanwhile it is reasonable to accept the historic 
Christ, as represented in the Gospel, together with the 
general account given of his teachings. In so far as 
the record is not accurate — and even without any 
knowledge of biblical criticism we must admit that it 
is bound to be inaccurate — ^we may be sure that the 
record is likely to be inferior to the reality, that the 
report of the teachings may have been spoiled and 
garbled in places but is not likely to have been im- 
proved. Some of these spoilings may have been due 
to misunderstanding, others to a desire for extra edifi- 
cation; and it is difficult to say which attitude of a 
transcriber is the more dangerous. 

A similar view, however, may be held concerning 
the record of the words of any astounding genius; 
his contemporaries and immediate successors are not 



274 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

likely to improve upon his teachings: even as mere 
commentators they may exhibit well-intentioned stu- 
pidity; but, if they have to act also as reporters, 
omission eked out by exaggeration must be prominent, 
and unconscious misrepresentation is bound to occur. 

But now in the case of Christ we may surely go 
much farther ; we may admit his inspiration in an ex- 
traordinary sense, and may accept the general con- 
sensus of Christendom as testifying to his essentially 
divine character : in other words, he must perceive that 
he has revealed to the inhabitants of this planet some 
of the salient features of Godhead to an altogether 
exceptional extent. 

He displays, in fact, attributes which many persons 
understand and signify when they use the word 
"God" : so much so, that they call him by the name of 
the Spirit which he reveals/ He does not display all 
the known attributes of God — ^not those studied in 
Natural Theology, for instance, — ^but he exhibits 
those which are most important to poor struggling 
humanity, and those which by their very simpHcity and 
naturalness might otherwise have been overlooked by 
the human race, or stigmatised as too hopelessly an- 
thropomorphic. The attributes of Fatherhood, for in- 
stance, strongly and simply realised, constitute one 
revelation; the effective combination, or even identi- 
fication, of love of God with service of neighbour, 
constitutes another; and there is, it seems to me, an 

1 The statement that the Christ depicted in the gospels is God, is a 
statement illustrative of our conception of Godhead, and not really an 
explanatory statement concerning Christ: we cannot define or explain 
the known in terms of the unknown. 



DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 275 

even bolder conception of Deity suggested, in the 
dramatic parable "the child in the midst," of which I 
fancy we have but an abbreviated version. 

The only place where we find it necessary to hesi- 
tate, and perhaps to remonstrate, is on the material- 
istic side of orthodox Christianity — the place where 
the ordinary phenomena of nature enter into the doc- 
trines, and are more or less associated or incorporated 
with them. Here it is natural to plead for more elas- 
tic treatment, and here alone do I imagine that the 
modern mind can see farther and walk more securely 
than the mediaeval mind ; it is possible that in the light 
of accumulated knowledge it can in some respects 
see more clearly than even the saints and prophets of 
the past. 

It has been the perennial glory of Christianity that 
it can adapt itself to all conditions of men and to all 
changing periods of time; but it has done so always 
by modification of the non-essential : the spirit and es- 
sence have preserved their identity; the accidentals, 
in Judaea, in ancient Rome, in mediaeval Germany, in 
modern England and America, — ^the accidentals have 
been different. 

But throughout, it will be said, certain of the ma- 
terial aspects have preserved their continuity and 
identity unchanged. Some of the miracles, especially 
the physical details supposed to accompany, or by 
some even to constitute, the Incarnation and the 
Resurrection, have never been doubted by Christians. 
Until recently, I agree, no, not to any great extent; 
but half a century ago they were seriously doubted 



276 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

by the people who thereby felt themselves outside the 
flock, but who in all practical details of life and con- 
duct were as good as — well, were comparable with — 
orthodox Christians. The disbelief went, in my judg- 
ment, too far: it extended itself to some of the spirit- 
ual teachings — ^those concerning prayer, for instance ; 
and it threw needless doubt upon some phenomena, 
such as those referred to in the last chapter, which 
may after all have been facts. Whether it went too 
far or not, an atmosphere of disbelief became preva- 
lent; and it was generated by the persistence of the 
faithful in certain material statements which to an 
age of more knowledge had become incredible. The 
extreme excursion of the pendulum has subsided now, 
but it is still swinging, and when it settles down it will 
not occupy precisely the same place as it did before 
the oscillation began. The swing was caused by a 
shifting of the fulcrum or point of support, and only 
I the bob has been visible. So it has become our duty to 

determine how much and in what direction the real 
pivot of the pendulum has been effectively moved, and 
to realise that that is the position which will be taken 
by the oscillating mass of opinion when present dis- 
turbances have subsided. Those, if there be any, who 
think that it can ever go back permanently to a pre- 

I nineteenth-century position, or to a position deter- 

mined by the first six or any other past centuries, are 
assuredly mistaken. 

We shall now endeavour to arrive at a closer ap- 
preciation of what the essence of Christianity really 



DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 277 

is; first, however, recollecting what it has been con- 
sidered to be by all sorts and conditions of men. 

V. Varieties of Christianity 

Christianity is a word of wide significance, and it 
is not easy to attach to it a definite meaning. It is 
clear that as it exists among us it has many phases, 
which may be grouped around five or six principal 
types. 

1. First there is evangelical or spiritual Chris- 
tianity, usually associated with the name of Paul, 
w^hich seeks to emphasise a forensic scheme of salva- 
tion, and to link itself on to the Hebraistic and Hel- 
lenistic ideas of blood and vicarious sacrifice. Salva- 
tion by faith in the Atonement is the central feature 
of this scheme, and right conduct is a secondary 
though natural sequel to right belief and to trust in 
what by Divine mercy has been already fully accom- 
pKshed; so that no "performance" is necessary for 
salvation, but only assimilation of the sacrifice and 
oblation of Christ, once and for ever accompHshed. 

This variety of Christianity aims at attending to 
the spiritual aspect only, and despises the material ; it 
rejects the intervention of men and of material aids; 
it mistrusts the use of music and ornament, and it 
endeavours, sometimes with poor success, to condemn 
the beauty of this present world in comparison with 
the glory that shall be revealed; even the sacraments 
it is inclined to minimise, and to regard them as me- 
morial services helpful to the spirit, rather than as 



278 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

agencies of real and present efficacy achieving some-, 
thing otherwise unattainable. Definite historical fact 
is of supreme importance to this variety of belief ; for 
if that be taken away the basis of faith is under- 
mined, and the system totters to destruction. 

2. Next there is ecclesiastical or dogmatic Chris- 
tianity, usually associated with the name of Peter, 
which is apt to emphasise the efficacy of ceremonies, 
to regard material actions and priestly offices as essen- 
tial to salvation, and to insist not only on their sym- 
bolic interpretation, but on some actual physical 
transformation, some bodily or material efficacy. It 
builds less upon an historic past, and more upon a 
present virtue residing in the Church, or accessible to 
and utilisable by the proper officers and dispensers 
of the means of grace. It feels the importance of 
times and seasons and buildings and sensuous repre- 
sentation; it is apt to concentrate attention on eccles- 
iastical details, with a zest for minutiae, which, when 
compared with the vital issues at stake, strikes an out- 
sider as rather pathetically humourous; and it some- 
times so elaborates the material acts of worship, such 
as the sacraments, that they tend to take on the nature 
of incantation, and are occasionally performed by the 
priest alone, the congregation passively sharing in 
their mysterious and miraculous virtue. 

3. Then there is the practical and energetic form of 
Christianity, usually associated with the name of 
James, which emphasises the virtue of good works 
and the importance of conduct, which regards belief 
and doctrine as of secondary importance, which seeks 



DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 279 

no cloistered virtue, but throws itself vigorously into 
social movement, and endeavours both by word and 
deed to serve the brethren, and by active charity to 
ameliorate the lot of those whom it thinks of as 
Christ's poor. 

4. Yet another variety is the mystical or emotional 
form of Christianity, usually associated with the 
name of John, which seeks by rapt adoration and 
worship of the Redeemer and love of all whom he has 
called his brethren — "even the least of these my 
brethren," — to rise to the height of spiritual contem- 
plation and ecstasy : tending somewhat in this its high 
quest to isolate itself from the world, in order to lose 
itself in an anticipation of heaven. 

5. There exists also, one must admit, some trace of 
what may be called governing or hierarchical Chris- 
tianity, which glorifies the priestly office, which seeks 
after temporal power, which regards the material 
prosperity of the Church as of more importance than 
the welfare of states and peoples, which joins hands 
with autocratic rulers for the oppression of the poor, 
which blesses and sustains violence, so it be used 
against the Church's enemies, which banishes and ex- 
comLmunicates the saints — even those of its own house- 
hold, — and by corruption of the best succeeds in abet- 
ting the cause of the worst. This is the kind of Chris- 
tianity which attracts the special notice of sceptics and 
scoffers; and most of the diatribes of good men 
against Christianity and the Christian ideal are 
based upon some confused apprehension of this 
ghastly and blasphemous travesty. 



280 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

Whether it exists, here and there, in this country it 
is not for me to say, but it certainly has some existence 
in that country which must some day pass through 
the throes of an ultimately beneficent revolution — the 
country whose Church has excommunicated Tolstoi, 
and whose late Procurator of Holy Synod, in fur- 
therance of what he conceived as legitimate ecclesias- 
tical aggrandisement, exhorted the Czar to folly and 
wickedness in terms of fulsome and superstitious 
adulation. 

6. Lastly and ostensibly the base of all these varie- 
ties — but how different from some of them, — there is 
the Christianity particularly exemplified and taught 
by that Syrian Carpenter, during his three years of 
public service, before his execution as a criminal blas- 
phemer. The name of that gentle and pathetic figure 
has been used by the greater part of the Western 
world ever since, sometimes to sanctify enterprises 
of pity and tenderness, sometimes to cloak miser- 
able ambitions, sometimes as a mere garment of 
respectability. 

Whatever view we may take of this Personality, we 
can most of us recognise it as the greatest that has yet 
existed on this planet; hence, if it is through human 
nature that we can gradually grow to some dim con- 
ception of the majesty of the Eternal, it is the life 
and teachings of that greatest Prophet that we shall 
do well to study diligently when we wish to disen- 
tangle and display some of the secrets of the spiritual 
universe; and, by the saints, his words have always 
been recognised as the highest yet spoken on earth 



DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 281 

concerning the relations between man and man and 
between man and God. It is certain that only a few 
of his utterances are contained in our documentary 
records, and it is probable that some of them have 
been mutilated and spoiled in transmission ; neverthe- 
less it is of interest to take those recorded words and 
see how far they countenance the various schemes or 
types of Christianity which have been based upon 
them. And in particular I wish to select those 
which seem to strengthen the case for either a partly 
material or a purely spiritual interpretation of 
Christianity. 

First, to clear away the blasphemous use of Christ's 
name in association with political or temporal or hier- 
archical Christianity, the following will suffices 

"My kingdom is not of this world." 

"Woe unto you, generation of vipers, that stoneth the prophets," etc. 
"Ye make the commandments of God of none effect by your tradi- 
tion." 

There are many emphatic statements that religion 
is peculiarly a spiritual affair: 

In favour of a spiritual form of religion 

"God is a spirit, and they that "The sabbath was made for 

worship him . . ." man." 

"Neither in this mountain nor "Meat ye know not of." 

yet in Jerusalem . . ." "The kingdom of heaven is with- 

"The words that I speak unto in you." 

you they are spirit . . ." "Beware of the leaven of the 

"That born of flesh is flesh, of Pharisees and Sadducees." 

spirit is spirit." "It is the spirit that quickeneth, 

"Ye make clean the outside of the flesh profiteth nothing." 

the cup." "How is it that ye do not under- 

"Pray in secret." stand?" 

"Mint, anise, and cummin." 



282 



SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 



On the other hand, there are several texts which 
appear to support material accessories: 

In favour of a ceremonial and material form of re* 

ligion 



"This is my body." 

Baptism. "Suffer it to be so 
now." 

"This kind goeth not out save 
by prayer and fasting." (Ques- 
tionably genuine.) 

Breaking of bread and giving 
thanks. 



"Eat the flesh of the Son of man 
and drink his blood." 

"Spit and touched his tongue." 

Anointing eyes. 

Wedding garment (otherwise in- 
terpretable). 



But the most numerous of the teachings have an 
inmiediately practical bearing: 

In favour of a practical form of religion 



Grapes and thistles. 

Heal the broken-hearted, liberty 
to captives, etc. 

"Inasmuch as ye did it . . ." 

"Go and sell all that thou hast." 

"Worketh hitherto, and I work." 

"Well done, good and faithful 
• • • 

Do the wiU to know of the doc- 
trine. 

"Blessed is that servant who is 
found so doing." 

Fruitless tree cut down. 

"I was an hungere4.'* 

"Gather them that do iniquity 



Sower and seed. 

Good Samaritan. 

"Casting out devils in thy name." 

"Heareth and doeth." 

Tree known by fruit. "By their 
fruits ye shall know them." 

"They that have done good to 
the resurrection of Ufe," etc. 

"Not every one that saith Lord, 
Lord." 

Cup of cold water. 

"He that doeth the will of my 
Father, the same is my brother," 
etc. 

"This do and thou shalt live." 



In many statements the human side of the Messiah 
is specially emphasised : 

Emphasising the human side of Christ 

"The Son can do nothing of himself." 
" X seek not my own will." 



DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY. 283 

"I am come in my Father's name." 

"He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory." 

"He hath given me a commandment what I should say." 

"Son of man." 

"Why caUest thou me good?" 

"Ye both know me and know whence I am." 

"As the Father gave me commandment, even so I do." 

{Statements emphasising the Divine side will be referred to later.) 

A few texts, so far as they are genuine, can be ap- 
pealed to as supporting ecclesiastical Christianity: 

In favour of an ecclesiastical form of Christianity 

"Keys of the kingdom of heaven." 

"Sitting on twelve thrones judging," etc. 

"Bind on earth shall be bound in heaven." 

"If he refuses to hear the church, let him be," etc. 

But it must be remembered that the frequency of 
expressions which, though full of meaning, can hardly 
be taken literally, but were so strongly figurative that 
even his Eastern associates were misled, is notorious : 

Figurative expressions 

"Hateth father and mother." "Let the dead bury their dead." 

"Renounceth not all that he "Come to me and drink." 

hath." "Whatsoever ye shall bind on 

"Prophet cannot perish out of earth shall be bound in heaven." 

Jerusalem." "Remove mountains." 

"Let him sell his cloke and buy "Some standing here shall not 

a sword." taste of death." 

"Not to give peace but a "Keys of kingdom of heaven." 

sword." "Bread of Hfe." 

Camel through needle's eye. "Born again." 

" Sit on twelve thrones judging." "Destroy temple." 

"Son coming in the clouds of "He that believeth is not 

heaven." judged." 

"This generation shall not pass "Eat my flesh and drink my 

away." blood." 

"I came not to judge the world." , "Everlasting fire " 

"This is my body." 



284 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

If we endeavour to draw from all these texts a 
general deduction concerning the kind of religion 
intended and taught by the Founder of Christianity, 
I cannot but feel that the balance inclines strongly in 
the double direction of a spiritual interpretation on 
the theoretical side, combined with a thoroughly prac- 
tical and simple outcome in daily life. These ele- 
ments, the spiritual and the practical — the worship of 
God as a Spirit, and the service of man as a brother — 
are undoubted and emphatic constituents — the warp 
and the woof, as it were — of the pure Christian faith, 
but it is difficult to maintain that they are uniquely 
characteristic of it; even when taken together they 
can hardly be said to constitute a feature which 
sharply distinguishes it from all other religious 
creeds. For a still more fundamental substratum or 
framework — for a perception of the really character- 
istic and essential element in Christianity — ^we must 
look away from the detailed words and teachings and 
contemplate the Life as a whole. 

VI. EccE Deus 

What, then, is the essential element in Christianity, 
the essential theoretical element which inspires its 
teachings on the ethical side? In the inculcation of 
practical righteousness other noble religions must be 
admitted to share, but there must be an element which 
it possesses in excess above others — some vital element 
which has enabled it to survive all the struggles for 
existence, and to dominate the most civihsed peoples 
of the world. 



DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 285 

A religion is necessarily compounded of many es- 
sences, and is sure to be mingled with foreign ingred- 
ients, some worthy, some unworthy; but these acces- 
sories cannot account for its vitality, for its adaptation 
to various ages, and for its acceptance by all condi- 
tions of men. A miraculous birth and resurrection 
were certainly not distinctive of Christianity; they 
have appeared in other religions too; we must look 
for some feature specially characteristic and quite 
fundamental. 

I believe that the most essential element in Chris- 
tianity is its conception of a human God; of a God, 
in the first place, not apart from the universe, not out- 
side it and distinct from it but immanent in it; yet 
not immanent only, but actually incarnate, incarnate 
in it and revealed in the Incarnation.^ The nature of 
God is displayed in part by everything, to those who 
have eyes to see, but is displayed most clearly and 
fully by the highest type of existence, the highest 
experience to which the process of evolution has so 
far opened our senses. By what else indeed can it 
conceivably be rendered manifest? Naturally the 
conception of Godhead is still only indistinct and par- 

1 It may appear hardly fair to treat the doctrine of Incarnation as 
an intensification of the doctrine of Immanence; inasmuch as some may 
consider them almost antithetic. Spinoza, for instance, held the one, but 
would assuredly have eschewed the other. I do not disagree, but point 
out that there is a tendency nowadays to strive rather towards a unifica- 
tion of the two doctrines. It may be admitted that emphasis on the 
philosophical notion of Immanence is comparatively recent on the part 
of theologians; but it can hardly ever have been completely absent from 
the Christian atmosphere, since St. Paul in his Athenian address clearly 
lent it liis countenance, and it is implicit in the doctrine of the Logos. 



286 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

tial, but so far as we are as yet able to grasp it, we 
must reach it through recognition of the extent and 
intricacy of the cosmos, and more particularly; 
through the highest type and loftiest spiritual devel- 
opment of man himself. 

This perception of a human God, or of a God in 
the form of humanity is a perception which welds to- 
gether Christianity and Pantheism and Paganism and 
Philosophy. It has been seized and travestied by 
Comtists, whose God is rather limited to the human 
aspect instead of being only revealed through it. It 
has been preached by some Unitarians, though rever- 
ently denied by others and by Jews, who have felt 
that God could not be incarnate in man: "This be far 
from thee. Lord." It has been recognised and even 
exaggerated by Catholics, who have almost lost the 
humanity in the Divinity, though they tend to restore 
the balance by practical worship of the Mother and 
of canonical saints. But whatever its unconscious 
treatment by the sects may have been, this idea — ^the 
humanity of God or the Divinity of man — I conceive 
to be the truth which constituted the chief secret and 
inspiration of Jesus: *'I and the Father are one." 
"My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." "The 
Son of Man," and equaUy "The Son of God." "Be- 
fore Abraham was I am." "I am in the Father and 
the Father in me." And though admittedly "My 
Father is greater than I," yet "he that hath seen me 
hath seen the Father"; and "he that believeth on m.e 
hath everlasting life." 

The world has been slow to grasp the meaning of 



DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 287 

all this. The conception of Godhead formed by some 
devout philosophers and mystics has quite rightly been 
so immeasurably vast, though still assuredly utterly 
inadequate and necessarily beneath reality, that the 
notion of a God revealed in human form — ^born, suf- 
fering, tormented, killed — has been utterly incredible. 
"A crucified prophet, yes; but a crucified God! I 
shudder at the blasphemy," ^ yet that apparent blas- 
phemy is the soul of Christianity. It calls upon us to 
recognise and worship a crucified, an executed, God. 

The genuine humanity of Christ is now manifest 
and clear enough, though that too has been in danger 
of being lost. There have been efforts to ignore it, 
and many to confuse it — attempts are still made to 
regard him as unique, rather than as the first-fruits 
of himianity, the first-born among many brethren. 

Realisation of the genuine and straightforward 
humanity of Christ is obscured by a reverent misap- 
prehension, akin in spirit to that which originated the 
Arian denial of his divinity. Both modes of thought 
shrank amazed from the suggestion that God can be 
really incarnate in, and manifested through, man: at 
any rate, not in normal man; such a thing only be- 
comes permissible and credible if the Man is abnormal 
and unique, according to the orthodox view. 

It is orthodox, therefore, to maintain that Christ's 
birth was miraculous and his death portentous, that he 
continued in existence otherwise than as we men con- 
tinue, that his very body rose and ascended into 

1 Kingsley's Eypatia. 



288 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

heaven, — whatever that collocation of words may 
mean. But I suggest that such an attempt at excep- 
tional glorification of his body is a pious heresy — a 
heresy which misses the truth lying open to our eyes. 
His humanity is to be recognised as real and ordinary 
and thorough and complete : not in middle Uf e alone, 
but at birth and at death and after death. Whatever 
happened to him may happen to any one of us, pro- 
vided we attain the appropriate altitude: an altitude 
which, whether within our individual reach or not, is 
assuredly within reach of humanity. That is what 
he urged again and again. "Be born again." "Be 
ye perfect." "Ye are the sons of God." "My Father 
and your Father, my God and your God." ^ 

The t^Tiuniqueness of the ordinary humanity of 
Christ is the first and patent truth, masked only by 
well-meaning and reverent superstition. But the sec- 
ond truth is greater than that — without it the first 
would be meaningless and useless, — if man alone, 
what gain have we ? The world is full of men. What 
the world wants is a God. Behold the God! 

The Divinity of Jesus is the truth which now re- 
quires to be re-perceived, to be illumined afresh by 
new knowledge, to be cleansed and revivified by the 
wholesome flood of scepticism which has poured over 
it ; it can be freed now from all trace of grovelling 
superstition, and can be recognised freely and enthus- 
iastically : the Divinity of Jesus, and of all other noble 
and saintly souls, in so far as they too have been in- 
flamed by a spark of Deity — in so far as they too can 
be recognised as manifestations of the Divine. Nor 



DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 289 

is it even through man alone that the revelation comes, 
though through man and the highest man it comes 
chiefly ; the revelation is implicit in all the processes of 
nature, and explicit too, so far as human vision, in 
the person of its seers and poets and men of science, 
has been as yet sufficiently cleared and strengthened 
to perceive it. 

For consider what is involved in the astounding idea 
of Evolution and Progress as applied to the whole 
universe. Either it is a fact or it is a dream. If it 
be a fact, what an illuminating fact it is ! God is one; 
the universe is an aspect and a revelation of God. 
The universe is struggling upward to a perfection not 
yet attained. I see in the mighty process of evolution 
an eternal struggle towards more and more self -per- 
ception, and fuller and more all-embracing Existence 
— not only on the part of what is customarily spoken 
of as Creation — but, in so far as Nature is an aspect 
and revelation of God, and in so far as Time has any 
ultimate meaning or significance, we must dare to 
extend the thought of growth and progress and de- 
velopment even up to the height of all that we can 
realise of the Supernal Being. In some parts of the 
universe perhaps already the ideal conception has 
been attained; and the region of such attainment — 
the full blaze of self-conscious Deity — ^is too bright 
for mortal eyes, is utterly beyond our highest 
thoughts; but in part the attainment is as yet very 
imperfect; in what we know as the material part, 
which is our present home, it is nascent, or only just 
beginning; and our own struggles and efforts and 



290 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

disappointments and aspirations — ^the felt groaning 
and travailing of Creation — ^these are evidence of the 
effort, indeed they themselves are part of the effort, 
towards fuller and completer and more conscious ex- 
istence/ On this planet man is the highest outcome 
of the process so far, and is therefore the highest rep- 
resentation of Deity that here exists. Terribly im- 
perfect as yet, because so recently evolved, he is 
nevertheless a being which has at length attained to 
consciousness and free-will, a being unable to be co- 
erced by the whole force of the universe, against his 
will; a spark of the Divine Spirit, therefore, never 
more to be quenched. Open still to awful horrors, to 
agonies of remorse, but to floods of joy also he per- 
sists, and his destiny is largely in his own hands; he 
may proceed up or down, he may advance towards a 
magnificent ascendancy, he may recede towards 
depths of infamy. He is not coerced: he is guided 
and influenced, but he is free to choose. The evil and 
the good are necessary correlatives ; freedom to choose 
the one involves freedom to choose the other. 

So it must have been elsewhere, amid the depths of 
cosmic space, myriads of times over in all the vistas 
of the past ; and thus may have arisen legends of the 

iSo, in Professor Gilbert Murray's version of "The Trojan women" 
of Euripides, — whose tragedies represent a parting of the ways between 
an old theology and a new, — ^the tortured Queen Hecuba turns from 
the gods that know but help not, to the majesty of her own immeas- 
urable grief, and in a moment of exalted vision perceives that even 
through her sorrow life had somehow been enriched, and that though 
Troy was burning and the race of Priam extinct, they had attained 
immortality in ways undreamed of, and would add to the harmony of 
the eternal music. 



J 



DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 291 

evolution of what are popularly called angels, some 
ascendant in the struggle, others fallen by their own 
rebellion. Let it not be supposed that these instinctive 
legends are based on nothing: they are a pictorial 
travesty doubtless, but they are not gratuitous inven- 
tions ; it is doubtful if entirely baseless or purely grat- 
uitous inventions would have any vitahty, every living 
idea must surely be based upon something ; these cor- 
respond to something innate in the ideas of humanity, 
because embedded in the structure of the universe of 
which that humanity is a part. 

A question presses on the optimist for answer there- 
fore : Are the rebellious and the sinful not also on the 
up grade? Ultimately and in the last resort will not 
they too put themselves in tune with the harmony of 
existence? Who is to say? Time is infinite, eternity 
is before us as well as behind us, and the end is not 
yet. There is no "ultimately" in the matter, for there 
is no end: there is room for an eternity of rebelKon 
and degradation and misery, as well as for one of joy 
and hope and love. We can see that virtue and happi- 
ness must be on the winning side, while crime is a 
fruit of arrested development, or reversion to an an- 
cestral type; we can perceive that vice contains sui- 
cidal elements, while every step in an upward direction 
increases the potential energy of the moral universe; 
yet clearly there is to be no compulsion; the door of 
hope is not closed, but it must of free-will be entered, 
and good and evil will be intermingled with us for 
many seons yet. The law of progress by struggle and 
effort is not soon to be abrogated and replaced by a 



292 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

Nirrana of passive contemplation. There is too much 
to do in this busy universe, and all must help. The 
universe is not a "being" but a "becoming" — an an- 
cient but light-bringing doctrine when realised, — it is 
in change, in development, in movement, upward and 
downward, that activity consists. A stationary condi- 
tion, or stagnation, would to us be simple non-exist- 
ence; the element of progression, of change, of ac- 
tivity, must be as durable as the universe itself. Mo- 
notony, in the sense of absolute immobility, is un- 
thinkable, unreal, and cannot anywhere exist: save 
where things have ceased to be. 

Such ideas, the ideas of development and progress, 
extend even up to God Himself, according to the 
Christian conception. So we return to that with which 
we started: The Christian idea of God is not that of 
a being outside the universe, above its struggles and 
advances, looking on and taking no part in the pro- 
cess, solely exalted, beneficent, self-determined and 
complete; no, it is also that of a God who loves, who 
yearns, who suffers, who keenly laments the rebellious 
and misguided activity of the free agents brought 
into iTeing by Himself as part of Himself, who enters 
into the storm and conflict, and is subject to condi- 
tions as the Soul of it all ; conditions not artificial and 
transitory, but inherent in the process of producing 
free and conscious beings, and essential to the full 
self -development even of Deity. 

It is a marvellous and bewildering thought, but 
whatever its value, and whether it be an ultimate reve- 
lation or not, it is the revelation of Christ. Whether 



DIVINE ELEMENT IN CHRISTIANITY 293 

it be considered blasphemous or not — and in his own 
day it was certainly considered blasphemous — ^this was 
the idea he grasped during those forty days of solitary 
communion, and never subsequently let go. 

This is the truth which has been reverberating down 
the ages ever since ; it has been the hidden inspiration 
of saint, apostle, prophet, martyr, and, in however 
dim and vague a form, has given hope and consola- 
tion to the unlettered and poverty-stricken millions ; — 
A God that could understand, that could suffer, that 
could sympathise, that had felt the extremity of 
human anguish, the agony of bereavement, had sub- 
mitted even to the brutal hopeless torture of the inno- 
cent, and had become acquainted with the pangs of 
death, — this has been the chief consolation of the 
Christian religion. This is the extraordinary concep- 
tion of Godhead to which we have thus far risen. 
"This is my beloved Son." The Christian God is re- 
vealed as the incarnate spirit of humanity, or rather 
the incarnate spirit of humanity is recognised as a real 
intrinsic part of God. "The Kingdom of Heaven is 
within you" : — surely one of the most inspired utter- 
ances of antiquity. 

Infinitely patient the Universe has been while man 
has groped his way to this truth: so simple and con- 
sohng in one of its aspects, so inconceivable and in- 
credible in another. Dimly and partially it has been 
seen by all the prophets, and doubtless by many of 
the pagan saints. Dimly and partially we see it now; 
but in the life-blood of Christianity this is the most 
vital element. It is not likely to be the attribute of 



294 SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY 

any one religion alone, it may be the essence of truth 
in all terrestrial reUgions but it is conspicuously Chris- 
tian. Its boldest statement was when a child was 
placed in the midst and was regarded as a symbol of 
the Deity; but it was fore-shadowed even in the early 
conceptions of Olympus, whose gods and goddesses 
were affected with the passions of men; it is the root 
fact underlying the superstitions of idolatry and all 
varieties of anthropomorphism, *'Thou shalt have 
none other gods but me" : and with dim eyes and duU 
ears and misunderstanding hearts men have sought to 
obey the commandment, seeking after God if haply 
they might find Him; while all the time their God 
was very nigh unto them, in their midst and of their 
fellowship sympathising with their struggles, rejoic- 
ing in their successes, and evoking even in their own 
poor nature some dim and broken image of Himself. 



END 



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